Chuck Russell reworking Arabian Nights

Chuck Russell is getting back into swords and sandal-style filmmaking with a new version of Arabian Nights - and he wants it in 3D.

It's been seven years since Russell made The Scorpion King and it looks like he wants to stick with desert tales.

He's nabbed a budget of $70 million for a script he wrote with Barry P Ambrose that puts a new spin on the classic story.

The plot will follow a young commander who sees his king killed in a palace coup, then joins forces with Sinbad, Aladdin and the genie to rescue the kingdom and Queen Scheherazade from the usual dark powers.

"Through the use of a new generation of visual technologies, we will be able to quite literally take audiences around the world on a magic carpet ride," Russell told Variety.

James White is a freelance journalist who has been covering film and TV for over two decades. In that time, James has written for a wide variety of publications including Total Film and SFX. He has also worked for BAFTA and on ODEON's in-cinema magazine.