Warner Bros. and filmmaker Bryan Singer are unsheathing Excalibur, aiming to remake the 1981 John Boorman movie about King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable.

The project is still in the early stages, with Warners tying up the remake rights, which it shares with Boorman. The matter of Singer's involvement is still in talks. Legendary Pictures may come aboard the project.

The 1981 movie starred Nigel Terry as Arthur and Cherie Lunghi as Guenevere and featured early performances from Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart and Gabriel Byrne, as well as a co-starring performance by Helen Mirren. In gritty and dramatic fashion, the movie told the well-known myth of the young man who draws the sword Excalibur from a stone, is mentored by Merlin, establishes Camelot, loses his wife, Guenevere, to his best friend, Lancelot, and engages in the quest for the Holy Grail.

Singer's Excalibur will be a more epic fantasy version compared with the earthy Clive Owen-starring King Arthur released by Disney/Touchstone in 2004.

Excalibur is not the next movie for Singer, whose credits include The Usual Suspects, X-Men and Valkyrie. The candidate for that is shaping up to be Jack the Giant Killer, New Line's action fantasy about a young farmer who leads a rescue mission to the kingdom of giants after a princess is kidnapped.

Excalibur joins Universal's big-screen version of Battlestar Galactica as one of Singer's projects in development.