Gerard Butler told SCI FI Wire that he has high hopes for his upcoming film, the medieval adventure Beowulf & Grendel. “I think it’s going to be like nothing you’ve ever really seen before,” the Scottish actor said in an interview while promoting his latest film, The Phantom of the Opera. “This movie has probably the most un-formulaic script I’ve ever read, especially coming from America, and that’s what grabbed me about it.”
Directed by Sturla Gunnarsson and based on the epic poem Beowulf & Grendel, the film follows the saga of the Norse warrior Beowulf (Butler) as he leads the charge against Grendel (Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson), a massive and deadly troll. “From the first word, from the first description of the characters I realized that I was reading something very different,” Butler said. “I had to read it twice before I really got it, but when I got it I could see just what a powerful thing this could be as a film. And I got to be so closely involved in it. I got to sit down with the director and we talked about his visions of Bergman and Kurasawa, and we talked about going widescreen on the Icelandic landscape.”
Butler added, “It’s this Viking story which is based on a fable, but in actual fact we’ve gone back and said, ‘Just imagine that there was a troll,’ and we’re saying, ‘Imagine this troll isn’t really a monster, but just another form of human.’ He’s like a Neanderthal man, more like a primate. So, there’s just really good meat on the bones. And Beowulf is a hero. It’s like the original hero story, but with a twist.” Beowulf & Grendel will be released in 2005.