The Three Musketeers ride again

It seems you can’t re-invent heroes these days without jumping in a time machine to discover how they got their start.

Millennium Films is planning to make a new film based on Alexandre Dumas’ classic tale of Athos, Porthos and Aramis, better known as the Three Musketeers. And the angle? We’ll learn how they first became the epic sword fighting warriors. D’Artagnan, who ended up joining them, will apparently have to wait until late in the movie, or for a possible sequel to get his moment in the cinematic sun.

Thanks to Dumas’ story being in the public domain, Millennium can avoid those pesky rights fees. And it’s not the first time the company has tried to re-launch classic characters – it has new adventures Conan The Barbarian, Buck Rogers and Hercules all bubbling away in its development cauldron.

Variety is travelling back in time .