Col Rides With Helgeland For 'a Knight's Tale'

After a weekend bidding war, Columbia Pictures emerged the big winner Monday, shelling out an estimated $5 million to filmmaker Brian Helgeland to direct and produce from his spec script "A Knight's Tale," sources said.

Helgeland, the Oscar-winning "L.A. Confidential" scribe, most recently penned and helmed the Mel Gibson starrer "Payback," which took in $81.5 million domestically for Paramount Pictures.

While sources are fairly tight-lipped about the plot of 'Tale,' it has been described as an action-adventure-romance set in the medieval world of jousting.

Helgeland will produce "A Knight's Tale" with Tim Van Rellim ("Ravenous").

Columbia production executive Matt Tolmach will oversee the project, which has begun casting. The studio is expecting that principal photography will start this spring in Prague, Czech Republic.

Sources said Helgeland's lucrative deal will not fall under Sony's writers agreement, which offers scribes 1%-2% of the gross receipts (HR 2/9). However, Helgeland will receive a back-end payment, the amount of which has not been disclosed, sources said.

The Helgeland deal marks the second time in less than a month that a multihyphenate has scored a major spec, producing and directing deal. Disney agreed to pay $10 million to "The Sixth Sense" writer-director M. Night Shyamalan for writing, directing and producing his spec script "Unbreakable," with Bruce Willis set to star. (HR 10/18)

CAA, manager Missy Malkin and attorney Alan Wertheimer brokered the deal for Helgeland, whose first produced writing effort was the late-'80s horror flick "976-EVIL."