Sunday 24 October 2021

Netflix commissions LAST KINGDOM movie

Netflix have commissioned a two-hour Last Kingdom film to follow the fifth and final season of the TV series next year.


Seven Kings Must Die will act as a follow-up to the series, with Alexander Dreymon (Uhtred) and most of the cast expected to reprise their roles.

Netflix revealed last May that the show would end with the fifth season. The news caused consternation among fans, because under the show's scheme of adapting two novels of Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Saga per season that would mean the show would only reach the tenth of thirteen books in the series. However, there was also speculation that Netflix were reluctant to commit to the massive time-skips that occur in the latter part of the series and leave Uhtred in his seventies by the time of the final novel (it should be noted that the series has already had thirty-something Dreymon playing Uhtred as a teenager in the first season and an early fifty-something in the fourth).

However the title Seven Kings Must Die may hint that the movie will indeed jump forwards to the closing storylines from the novels, which see the Seven Kingdoms of Britain (the Heptarchy) finally uniting under one single King of England, fulfilling the dream laid out by Alfred the Great in the opening episodes of the series.

Seven Kings Must Die starts shooting in early 2022 in Budapest, presumably for a 2023 release. Season 5 of The Last Kingdom is expected to drop on the streamer in the spring.

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