ST THOMAS À BECKET was murdered by a group of foul-mouthed knights who rode about the country in a Wild West-style posse, according to a forthcoming Hollywood film.

Harvey Weinstein, the mogul behind Shakespeare in Love and Gangs of New York, has engaged a Scottish director to make Four Knights, an action movie about the men Henry II asked to kill the Archbishop of Canterbury.

He told Paul McGuigan to portray the knights as a band of deputies. “Don’t think of it as medieval,” he said. “Think of it as being like Young Guns.”

McGuigan, who directed Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman in the recent thriller Lucky Number Slevin, said he was not concerned with historical accuracy. “Being from Scotland, I don’t have this reverence for the history,” he said. “I see it as a modern film. It’s a kind of road movie, because they are always fleeing and they are on the road all the time. It’s a medieval Wild Bunch, full of big characters and great action.”

Historians have derided the idea of knights as “geezers”. Marcus Bull, a senior lecturer in historical studies at Bristol University, said the four 12th-century knights were respectable figures on the fringes of baronial society. “The image of footloose knights knocking around Henry’s court is false. There is very little of the geezer about these people. They are very hardened political animals. [The assassination plot] was not jumping on horses and saying, ‘ Hi-ho Silver, away’. They were quite respectable and well-resourced.”

He added: “There is never a year when an aspect of the Middle Ages is not traduced in film. Hollywood used to defer to academic history, even while disregarding aspects of it. Not any more.”

McGuigan hopes to cast actors of the calibre of Ewan McGregor and Paul Bettany, whom he directed in another medieval thriller, The Reckoning. The director initially declined the script because he did not wish to make another film set in the Middle Ages, but relented when Weinstein asked him to make it like a western. “It’s about these four young men having to fight off attackers,” he said.

McGuigan also draws parallels between the Norman invasion of Britain and the British presence in Iraq. “In Iraq it’s the same sort of thing, where you go to another country and you try to make them think the way you think.”

The film, which will begin shooting in September, is based on Four Nights in Knaresborough, by the British playwright Paul Webb. The stage version made its debut in 1999. It was directed by Richard Wilson and starred Jonny Lee Miller and James Purefoy.

Webb adapted his own play for the film and sold it to Harvey and Bob Weinstein.

À Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral on December 29, 1170, by Reginald Fitzurse, Hugh de Moreville, William de Tracy and Richard le Breton. The knights, who resented the way à Becket was throwing his weight around, acted after Henry II expressed his irritation with the archbishop. He reputedly cried: “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Should Knox’s trial even have reached the courtroom?
• All that glitters is not sold in Wright’s world
• Believe it or not, Big Brother is your friend