300 Footage Online - See Spartans lay the smackdown

300 Footage Online - See Spartans lay the smackdown


September 21, 2006

Empire Online



We’ve been excited about it since we went on set last December, and finally a few snippets of finished 300 footage cropped up online today. Unfortunately, it's since been taken down.

Based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel, the film stars Gerard Butler as Leonidas, the Spartan King who led 300 of his crackest troops on a desperate mission to stall an army of a million Persians intent on invading Greece. The result, the Battle of Thermopylae, is one of the most famous military encounters in history, but you’ll have to look up the ending cause we’re not telling.

The snippets followed Leonidas’ training as a true Spartan, his rejection of the Persians’ offer of alliance, and the march into battle against the Persian hordes. We also saw the silver-masked Immortals, the guy with blades instead of hands and the misshapen Ephialtes, the hunchback who wants to be a Spartan warrior.

The film also stars Lena Headey as Gorgo, Leonidas’ queen; David Wenham as narrator Dillios, and Rodrigo Santoro as Persian emperor Xerxes (he’s the dude with all the gold chains about his person), with Dawn of the Dead remake director Zach Snyder behind the camera. It’s due out in March, which by our count is about six months not soon enough.

Check out the footage here. Except that it's gone now, so you'll have to trawl the web for it.


www.empireonline.com