Irvine Welsh is developing a “bold new” adaptation of Ivanhoe

By Sam Barsanti | February 20, 2015 | 3:01am

Aux Features Film

After making Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh’s Filth into a movie last year, director Jon S. Baird is teaming up with the famous Scottish novelist again. This time, though, they’re not making a film based on one of Welsh’s books—unless he has been writing under a pseudonym and is actually over 200-years-old, but we don’t think that’s the case. According to Deadline, Welsh and Baird are developing a “bold new adaptation” of Walter Scott’s 1820 novel Ivanhoe with producer Jens Meurer’s Egoli Tossell Film studio. That means it’s probably the same Ivanhoe adaptation we reported on back in May, but K-Pax director Iain Softley is no longer involved.

As for what will make this version of Ivanhoe different from, for example, the one Elizabeth Taylor made in the ‘50s, Deadline says it will play up the “different degrees” of post-traumatic stress disorder that Ivanhoe and his fellow knights suffer from after fighting in the Crusades. Doesn’t that sound fun? A bunch of heroic dudes dealing with psychological issues? It’ll be like a medieval American Sniper—which actually sounds kind of interesting.