Damien Douglas Talks Bold New Sword-and-Sandal Epic ‘Moors’

Veteran producer Damien Douglas is about to embark on his most epic quest yet: fulfilling a decades-long dream to put a unique spin on the classic sword-and-sandal adventure.

Douglas (To Get Her, The Contract, Fatale, The Gen Zone, D.O.P.E. Unit) is slated to begin production later this year on the recently announced historical saga Moors, detailing the Muslim Aghlabids’ conquest of Sicily circa 827 A.D. Under false pretenses, an exiled Roman general ensares young warrior Tariq and two other Black soldiers into a war to resolve the general’s old grudge against the Eastern Roman Empire.

Douglas supplies Trailers From Hell with his own “elevator pitch” for the project.

“Tariq and his friends unwittingly end up being the catalyst that launched a war, that conquered a nation,” Douglas says. “You have good and bad on both sides, and they both realize that the war, that is now going on, started for no reason.”

This eventually kicks off multiple centuries of Muslim rule in the territory, which historically only ended after a 30-year conflict with Norman forces — who fully took over in 1091, although that is beyond the conclusion of this first story.

Although Douglas remains mum on his cast for now, he’s bringing in some heavy hitters behind the camera. The film will be helmed by Halo director Roel Reiné and written by Emmy-nominated Fallout scribe Chaz Hawkins, with a story from Douglas.

When cameras finally do start rolling on Moors, it will represent the culmination of a long-term passion project for Douglas. He’s been fleshing out the film’s narrative arc for the last 18 years.

“It’s not just one story. It’s just a part of history, similar to 300 or Troy or any of those — The Odyssey, which is coming out now — it’s one of those. So I’m always thrilled to make movies, I’m a filmmaker,” Douglas tells Trailers From Hell. “I always thank Quentin Tarantino for this movie, because [in 1993] a film called True Romance came out… [In] the scene with Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken, when he tells Christopher Walken that the Moors conquered Sicily… In the moment, I didn’t know anything about it, so I went and researched it!”

Tarantino penned the script for that slick, star-studded crime flick about the seedier side of Southern California. Tony Scott served as the director. While it didn’t do robust box office business at the time, it has since

“Throughout the years, you watch movies like Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood — Morgan Freeman was a Moor. I read a lot of Shakespeare, and Othello was a Moor. So I started putting pieces together. The Moors are around, this North African thing. Their sword was always different… their look was always different.”

The project gestated as the kernel of an idea for Douglas long before he became a prolific film and television producer. But after witnessing the blockbuster success of Zach Snyder’s stylish and bloody Spartan tone poem 300, Douglas was inspired to finally build out the project by 300 producer Mark Canton.

“Finally, in 2007, 2008, I am now in the film business — because back then [during my initial research in the ’90s] I wasn’t. I happen to share an office with Mark Canton, who had just done 300. So in talking to him about 300 and how he did it, I said, ‘I want to do what would be considered a Black sword-and-sandal movie,’ because at that time — still, to this day — the only sword-and-sandal movies you see are always Roman, Greek, that type of thing.”

“Mark Canton was telling me [about] 300 and the history behind it, the source material, where it came from. He said, ‘If you have something that is strong, a period piece like that, then that’s something you should develop. I then thought of the Moors, and that’s where the idea started. I wanted to do a Black version of 300… Here it is almost 20 years later. I’ve made a number of films, I’ve learned about the business, I’ve gotten to a greater understanding of filmmaking. I now have worked with enough people, and enough writers, to put together an epic script that I can now do.”

And now that is happening, in concert with Hawkins. While Moors has yet to make final casting decisions, Douglas assures Trailers From Hell, “My ambitions are great.”

“Two things: I’m taking the script to another level — so I’m still doing that. I wanted to upgrade the script so more. I can’t announce [the] cast yet… I intend to work with the best, talented actors in Hollywood to tell the story that has never been told, and shot in a way that’s never been done. You’re going to see people on screen together that you’ve never seen do movies together before.”

So narratively, what are we in for with Moors?

Douglas cites Troy, specifically, as being the biggest cinematic inspiration for his approach to the new film’s plotting.

“Because Brad Pitt [Achilles] is the hero and the villain. Think about it. Eric Bana [Hector]’s a good guy, he did nothing wrong. Agamemnon is the asshole! Helen of Troy is kind of foul, she cheated on her man. She started a whole war. So you kind of get stuck. Brad’s the great Achilles, but he’s technically on the wrong side,” Douglas says. “Even though my battles are for different reasons, it was helping me with my character development — because these characters are all heroes or villains, depending on the perspective. If you are with Eric Bana and Orlando Bloom’s characters… Achilles is the villain! He’s coming to kill them, and for what?”

Contextualizing our protagonists and antagonists with shades of grey, where everyone could conceivably construe themselves as a hero in their own mind, has been an imperative aspect of the world Douglas is constructing with Moors.

“I think there’s good and bad on both sides,” Douglas notes of his own story — and Troy. “That’s the beauty of my film, because the Moors are invading Sicily. Why? It’s not their land. They’re in North Africa. They’re crossing the sea to go into Sicily.

“Now we know the Moors conquered Spain and went as far as France before they returned. You have Moorish architecture all over Spain and all over Sicily. But why? You think of Shakespeare’s Othello. Othello’s a Moor. He’s in Venice. He’s very reputable, very respectable, but that’s the opposite end of Sicily. We’re at the top of the country now, you’re in Venice. It is 800 years later, but why? What did Shakespeare see that inspired that to be written? The Moors are held in high regard throughout history, but there’s no story about them told. That’s the motivation. You hear about Hannibal, yes. Hannibal rode the elephants over the Alps, but he lost and died. That’s not the story I’m telling.”

Principal photography is scheduled to tip off later this year in Tunisia and Sicily. Douglas will produce the project with Hawkins and Matt Macur (The Dutchman) via Douglas’ shingle Movies By Misfits banner.

“It’s an epic undertaking, the likes of which no one has seen before,” Douglas observes. “What I’m doing hasn’t been done.”

Douglas is also overseeing casting for Moors, with principal photography planned for the start of 2027 in Sicily, Tunisia and Malta. Douglas indicates that the movie should hit screens in 2028.

“I kind of have locations locked in, but things keep happening over there,” Douglas chuckles. “I kind of have to check back in.”

So locations can change — which is why Douglas emphasizes the importance of contingency planning for international productions of this scale.

“You have to, because places may not even exist by the time you’re ready to shoot!” Douglas says. “Or the landscape has dramatically changed.”

While the goal with Moors is to potentially build out a franchise, Douglas stresses that this first film will also be satisfactorily self-contained for audiences. Still, there’s a lot of meat on the bone for possible future stories.

“I’m making a film, this film stands alone by itself as a great film, okay? I hope this will spark interest, because there are so many ancillary things that can happen. I’d love to create a series talking about the life of what happens after the film, because that can exist for a minute. There’s a lot that happens with Moors in Sicily. You have to recognize, they’re in that Byzantine era. The Vikings were also fighting with the Romans at that time. You had a whole series of The Vikings. There’s a lot of things that intersect.”

How much of this story is based in fact?

“These characters existed in history,” Douglas explains. “This is something that actually happened, at a time period it really happened. These people really existed.”

However it all shakes out, Trailers From Hell will be at cinemas, ticket in hand, for opening weekend.