Reading Between The Lines As to Why Warner Brothers Shelved Bryan Singer's "Excalibur" Movie

http://www.totalfilm.com/news/bryan-singer-s-excalibur-remake-canned

quote - "As a fan of John Boorman’s bloody epic Excalibur, TF was interested to see what a modern-day retelling of the King Arthur legend would look like.

Sadly, Bryan Singer’s update of the 1981 film has been shelved by Warner Bros. in favour of a different Arthurian tale.

“Yeah, unfortunately it is no longer going to happen,” Singer told SFX at the annual Sitges Film Festival. “I was really enthused to do it. I’m a fan of John Boorman’s movie and it was my intention to get it going after Jack The Giant Killer was completed.”

“The project was with Warner Bros and what happened is that another King Arthur project was brought to them during that time. Basically, it was just more ready to go into production than ours was. That is why our version of Excalibur ended up being negated.”

Singer isn't letting the disappointment get to him, mind.

“When that happened, it allowed me to go straight into developing Battlestar Galactica - which I think will be really exciting.” - unquote

Source: SFX

What's highlighted in red (above) is very important here.  I doubt that this was an issue where Warner Brothers just suddenly decided to go with another King Arthur project. The implication here is that Bryan Singer was just taking too damn long to develop his movie, so Warner Brothers chose another King Arthur project (and another director...one more expeditious than Bryan Singer) to get it knocked out and into theaters as quickly as possible.

Bryan Singer's work habits as a movie director fall into two categories:

1. Movies he never starts or completes at all -

"Excalibur, Battlestar Galactica, Logan's Run, Six Billion Dollar Man"

2. Movies that take him half decades to complete -

"Jack The Giant Killer", "Excalibur" - (if Warner Brothers hadn't cut him off at the pass)

It is now the "new normal" for Bryan Singer to hear about him dropping out of a film project he had announced earlier.

Of course, we're never going to find out why Bryan Singer went directly into directing a sitcom pilot for NBC-TV ("The Munsters") directly after Warner Brothers nuked his "Excalibur" movie. And directly after Bryan Singer stated that his very, very, very next project would be a "Battlestar Galactica" movie.