My Kingdom For A Horse

Baz Luhrmann and producer Dino De Laurentiis will be filming Alexander The Great in the Australian outback, they announced at a Sydney press conference, provided the government can pay them in horses. Faced with the pressing need to mobilise the entire Grecian army for his classical epic, Luhrmann has asked to conscript a thousand horses and five hundred soldiers for eight weeks of the shoot. Those kind of numbers should give you some idea of the sheer scale the Luhrmann has planned for the film, a project he has wanted to make for the last ten years. While Lord Of The Rings used cutting-edge software to simulate invading hordes, Luhrmann appears to be taking the classical approach by arming legions of extras and sending them charging into the fray with swords and spears waving. While other, unspecified, countries have apparently already offered mounts and men, hopes are high that the Australian government will front the necessary props so that the shoot can start in New South Wales next March Luhrmann and De Laurentiis declined to confirm rumours that Mel Gibson has been cast as Alexander's father - though knowing smiles were passed around - and, while happy to enthuse about their project at length, they were unwilling to comment on the competition: Oliver Stone's similarly themed Alexander. "We don't want to talk about our competition, they are two different movies," the producer told Variety.