‘King Arthur: Legend of the Sword’ takes a bellyflop off a cliff

“King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” did not merely fail at the box office this weekend. It took a bellyflop ... from a cliff ... into a teacup ... filled with only a few drops of water.

With an estimated budget of about $150 million (before marketing), the film’s $14.7 million opening was crippling. But what led to this summer’s first big casualty? Let’s perform a little celluloid autopsy to better understand why “Arthur” was unable to get his sword up.

About six years ago, it was announced that a spec script titled “Arthur & Lancelot” from writer David Dobkin was acquired by Warner Bros., essentially stabbing the heart of a another planned remake of John Boorman’s 1981 epic “Excalibur” by “X-Men” director Bryan Singer.

The script alone was at the center of a bidding war among Warner, Fox and Universal, with WB ultimately shelling out $2 million and placing it on the calendar for a March 15, 2013 release date. Director Guy Ritchie, who at the time had just released his “Sherlock Holmes” sequel, was simultaneously working on another Camelot-centric film with “Trainspotting” writer John Hodge.

In the following years, the project evolved and grew, with the website Deadline noting in 2014 that it morphed into a six-picture series with Colin Farrell and Gary Oldman rumored to fill the roles of Arthur and Merlin, respectively.

That same year, it was reported in Variety that the film was ultimately slated for a prime summer slot in 2016. “Sons of Anarchy’s” Charlie Hunnam was sealed in the lead role, and despite prolonged interest by everyone from Elizabeth Olson to Idris Elba in the preceding years, Eric Bana and Ritchie’s “Holmes” co-star Jude Law were signed as as Arthur’s father and the evil King Vortigern.

On March 10, 2015, Ritchie tweeted out a picture of the first day of shooting, but nine months later, things took a decidedly different turn. Deadline reported that the film’s release date would be bumped to the following year and in the doldrums of February, a time of year usually reserved for studios’ detritus that is essentially a step up from witness protection in terms of exposure. Within the year that followed, the film was moved like an unwanted United Airlines passenger, pushing its release-date seat twice, to March 24 and ultimately to May 12. Ritchie, meanwhile, completed an over-three-hour cut of the film that was whittled to a less butt-numbing runtime of two hours and six minutes.

“Arthur” not only struggled to find an audience in the states, but failed to find traction globally as well, with a worldwide total of about $53 million. Finger pointing is rampant, with various sources saying Ritchie has lost his appeal, the film was marketed poorly, and rebooting classics is dead, pointing to the recent disappointments of “Pan” and “Tarzan.” But Ritchie was successfully able to retool a beloved literary character into at least two commercially-if-not-critically successful pictures with “Sherlock Holmes.”

Yet another theory is that the need to create multi-picture franchises has ruined the momentum of singular epics, as studios are prodding filmmakers to create lasting monetary legacies with their larger pictures.

It seems like it could have been a mixture of all these elements that ultimately led “Arthur” to fall on its own sword. It’s too early in the box office season to sense a pattern in moviegoers, but this week’s latest “Alien” installment “Covenant” is yet another large release that will have to blast out of the gates to make back its estimated $111 million budget. The film’s quasi-prequel, 2012’s “Prometheus,” was a hit, but met with mixed reactions from fans, so there is perhaps more riding on this than normal.

“Arthur” will surely not the be the end to the big-screen adaptations of the medieval ruler, but it may perhaps give studios pause when it comes to their ambitions. After all, creating a monstrously successful franchise from scratch is no small task, sort of like pulling a sword from a stone.