Although Walt Disney initially purchased the film rights to The Ill-Made Knight in 1944,[9] he eventually produced an adaptation of The Sword in the Stone (released in 1963). This film reflects more the sense of humour of Disney's team of animators than White's. The film adds a more comical side to the original story, including song and dance, as in most Disney films.
Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's 1960 musical Camelot (which was made into a movie in 1967) is based mostly on the last two books of The Once and Future King and features White's idea of having Thomas Malory make a cameo appearance at the end, again as "Tom of Warwick".
BBC Radio produced a dramatised version of "The Sword in the Stone" for Children's Hour shortly after its publication in 1938. Incidental music for the serial was specially composed by Benjamin Britten.
A two-hour version of The Sword in the Stone, dramatised by Neville Teller, was first broadcast as a Saturday Night Theatre on Boxing Day, 1981. Michael Hordern played Merlyn and Toby Robertson was the Wart. The cast included Pauline Letts, David Davis, Jeffrey Segal and Lewis Stringer. Benjamin Britten's incidental music, played by the English Sinfonia, was used in the production, which was by Graham Gauld.
BBC Radio 4 serialised the book in six one-hour episodes dramatised by Brian Sibley, beginning on Sunday 9 November 2014 with Paul Ready as Arthur and David Warner as Merlyn.[10]
Other references
Film
- George A. Romero's film Knightriders (1981) references The Once and Future King as the inspiration for a travelling Camelot of motorcycle-riding knights aspiring to the code of chivalry.
- The film X2 (2003) begins one scene with Magneto reading the first edition of The Once and Future King in his prison cell. At the end of the film, Xavier is using the book as a teaching tool.
- In the film Bobby (2006) Edward Robinson (Laurence Fishburne) relates the novel's depiction of King Arthur to the selfless and chivalrous qualities of Jose Rojas (Freddy Rodriguez).
- The film X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) shows Charles Xavier reading lines from The Once and Future King with his students.
- In Lorenzo's Oil (1992), Michaela reads The Once and Future King aloud to Lorenzo.
Literature
- In Rodman Philbrick's Freak the Mighty (1993) Max Kane and Kevin Dillon bond through the book; and, inspired by Dillon's fits of fancy, the two embark on a quest to embody the heroic qualities of King Arthur.
- The Magicians by Lev Grossman includes a long sequence where magicians-in-training are transformed into geese, a "direct and loving homage" to Wart's transformation in The Sword in the Stone.[11]
- Jim Butcher uses the title of Queen of Air and Darkness as an epithet of Queen Mab, ruler of the Winter Fae and the Unseelie Sidhe in The Dresden Files.
- Cassandra Clare uses the title Queen of Air and Darkness (2018) for the naming of her third book in The Dark Artifices series as a reference to White's second story.
Comics
- In the Marvel Universe, the X-Men comics mention The Once and Future King several times, notably in the first issue of the "X-Tinction Agenda" story arc, which mentions that the book is Professor X's favourite, and that Xavier always saw himself as Merlyn, the teacher guiding the hero(es), rather than as a hero himself.
- In the "Ultimate X-Men" comics, the book is a metaphor for Magneto, an extremely powerful mutant terrorist.
- "Once & Future", a comic by Kieron Gillen where Arthurian legends return in modern times, directly copies the title.
- "The Once and Future Duck", a 1996 Donald Duck story by Don Rosa where Donald and his nephews travel in time to meet the real King Arthur.
Television
- In Netflix series House of Cards, President Underwood quotes an excerpt from King Arthur's monologue "I Know What My People Are Thinking Tonight"[12] from the musical film Camelot (1967) based on the musical stage version of Camelot (1960).
- The Starz series Blunt Talk references The Once and Future King several times as it is Walter Blunt's favourite story.
