Actor and Director Mel Gibson is working on a Viking-themed film that is going to star Leonardo DiCaprio, who will have to brush up on his Old Norse. The script is in the hands of Oscar-winning screenwriter William Monahan, and will chronicle the Viking raids on England and Scotland in the ninth century.
When asked about the Viking project at a recent press event, Mel Gibson told Collider.com: I think its going to be English – the English that would have been spoken back then – and Old Norse. Whatever the 9th century had to offer. Im going to give you real.
Gibson certainly has some previous experience when it comes to realism in ancient world movie-making: The Passion of the Christ contained Aramaic, Hebrew and Latin, and of course, there is *coughs* Braveheart.
Will this movie give you the real Viking experience? If it is up to Mel, definitely: I want to see somebody who I have never seen before speaking low guttural German who scares the living shit out of me coming up to my house.
The Vikingsused their famed longships to travel as far east as Constantinople and the Volga River in Russia, and as far west as Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland. This period of Viking expansionforms a major part of the medieval history of-and lead to a seriousexpansion of the gene poolin– Scandinavia, Britain, Ireland and the rest of Europe in general.
Hopefully, shooting for this Viking epic will start this year. I’m definitely looking forward to this one! Regardless if this ‘edutainment‘ will teach me anything beyond Old Norse grunts and Viking fashion sense or not.