ARTHUR THE KING creator Michael Brandt and director Simon Cellan Jones explain the heart behind the story and why audiences should watch the movie in theaters.
“You know, I’m from Sweden originally, and these things [don’t] happen to people like me. To write a book and now finally be here with the movie is surrealistic,” Brandt told Movieguide®. “To be honest, I can’t really digest it.
I can’t really put the name of the feeling I feel right now besides [that] I am very proud. When I met the guys at the special screening yesterday with Simon and all those guys, I just felt a lot of happiness with what we have created together.”
ARTHUR THE KING tells Brandt’s true story of a street dog who followed him through an ultramarathon in the jungle of Ecuador.
“Over the course of ten days and 435 miles, and unbreakable bond is forged between pro adventure racer Michael Light (Mark Wahlberg) and a scrappy street dog companion dubbed Arthur.
ARTHUR THE KING follows Light, desperate for one last chance to win… As the team is pushed to their outer limits of endurance in the race, Arthur redefines what victory, loyalty and friendship truly means,” a synopsis of the movie reads.
The emphasis on friendship and loyalty is what makes the movie special. It is also why Jones believes the movie is best experienced in a movie theater surrounded by others.
“I think one thing I’ve found watching this movie with an audience sort of multiplies everything because I think those shared emotions and those shared realizations are very infectious and very compelling to people,” Jones told Movieguide®. “So, yeah, I’d love younger people to get out there and see the movie.”
The lessons from the movie are not fictional either. Brandt and his family learned a lot from welcoming this stray dog into their lives.
“[Arthur] changed everything for me,” Brandt said. “I stopped racing a year later, and, you know, for me, I got my second child, Thor, and he kind of grew up with Arthur. The first step he took was like when he was climbing on his fur.
To have a dog in your house when you have kids growing up, I think that’s the best because they take care of each other. It’s like they’re bonding.”
“For us, Arthur was just a puppy or a dog, he was like a personality; he was one of us five in the family. And we also did a lot of adventures because the thing that he loved the most was to go out there in the snow or in the forest or stuff like that and we did a lot of things when he was with us,” Brandt continued. “So, I would thank a lot to him that we have this beautiful family that I have today.”
ARTHUR THE KING comes to theaters on March 15.
Check out the rest of Movieguide®’s interview here:
Movieguide® previously reported:
Mark Wahlberg shared with Movieguide® at the ARTHUR THE KING red carpet why he makes movies that inspire his viewers.
“Those [films] are always the ones that resonate best with the audience,” Wahlberg toldMovieguide®’s Jeremy Carroll. “Those are the ones that I get the most fulfillment out of, and those are the kind of movies that have always inspired me and encouraged me to do more, to be better, to get active.”
“I’ve felt like sometimes we just like…to laugh, to cry and to be inspired, [and] that’s the ultimate goal of filmmaking for me,” he continued.
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