The odds of his character Jon Snow emerging victorious from the game of thrones on HBO’s Game of Thrones aren’t terribly promising; I mean, he doesn’t have any dragons or even a stable of prostitutes. But Kit Harington isn’t going to let that stop him from wearing a crown and stuff, as the young Brit has just booked his first starring film role, signing on to play King Arthur in writer-director David Dobkin’s forthcoming Arthur and Lancelot. Per Variety’s Showblitz blog, the 24-year-old thesp beat out Sam Claflin (The Pillars of the Earth) and Thrones co-star Richard Madden (aka Snow’s half-brother Robb Stark, aka King of the motherfucking North) in the screen-testing phase. Personally, I think Madden has more of a King Arthur vibe about him on the show, but I’m not complaining.Harington joins Joel Kinnaman (standout on AMC’s The Killing), who was recently cast as Lancelot. The project is expected to begin shooting sometime in early 2012. Steve recently sat down with Dobkin, who spoke a bit about his plans for the film. Hit the jump to see what he had to say.david-dobkin-01Dobkin went back to the drawing board for his version, creating the story almost from scratch:

“I pulled the legend apart. I only kept a few things. I kept certain characters, I recreated the entire launch of the legend and why it starts the way that it starts, I don’t want to give away too much but it’s always had a flaw. I pulled the flaws out, I reinvented the characters as grounded characters. I took a much more realistic and grounded approach towards everybody, you know why would this character be this way and why would this character be that way? You know Arthur’s superpower is compassion and vision. I will tell you this, the whole thing is wrapped around the birth of democracy as a concept and it’s positing Arthur as the first man to say all men are created equal.”

As things move forward, we should hear more casting news regarding Arthur & Lancelot soon.