Because folks apparently can't get enough of Arthurian legend (aside from the tanking of King Arthur and other sword-and-sorcery flicks), Warner Bros. was previously developing two movies set in the sub-genre.  There was Bryan Singer's Excalibur and Guy Ritchie's Excalibur, but then WB killed both projects in favor of David Dobkin's Arthur & Lancelot, which is due to start filming in January for a March 15, 2013 release.  However, Bryan Singer isn't too broken up about the loss of his Excalibur.  He has plenty of other projects in the pipeline and he says the death of Excalibur has allowed him to turn his attention to the feature film adaptation of Battlestar Galactica.Hit the jump for what Singer had to say about why his Excalibur died and how he'll be moving on to Battlestar Galactica.  Singer's next film, Jack the Giant Killer (a blockbuster adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk), is set to open in 3D on June 15, 2012.Here's what Singer told SFX [via The Playlist] about Excalibur and Battlestar Galactica:

"Yeah, unfortunately it is no longer going to happen,” he says. “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. But, when that happened, it allowed me to go straight into developing Battlestar Galactica – which I think will be really exciting."

The Battlestar Galactica thing may be confusing to some since there are multiple versions: the original 1978 show, a sequel TV series in 1980, and then the superior 2003 remake, which then had the short-lived prequel series Caprica.  From what we know, it looks like Singer's version will call back to the 1978 version.  That's a tricky proposition since the 2003 version is the most popular of the BSG franchise, and non-geeks may need to be reminded that it wasn't the original. But that's a marketing problem, and I'm curious to hear more details on what Singer has planned for his movie.