aspiring poet who joins Bowen and Draco in the revolt against Einon. Cohen wanted Postlethwaite for the role based on his performance in In the Name of the Father, feeling that "anyone who was assured in a dramatic role could take Brother Gilbert and make it real and charmingly funny". Jason Isaacs as Lord Felton, Einon's second in command. He hires Bowen to slay a dragon running rampant around his village but refuses to pay after learning more of Bowen. Julie Christie as Queen Aislinn, Einon's mother. Cohen found Christie through David Thewlis' casting agent. Peter Hric as King Freyne, Einon's father and Aislinn's husband. Brian Thompson as Brok, Einon's knight who served alongside Einon's father when he was king. Terry O'Neill as Redbeard, Kara's father. Wolf Christian as Hewe, a one-eyed villager who is part of the peasant rebellion. John Gielgud as the uncredited voice of King Arthur, who speaks to Bowen during his visit to Avalon. Production Writing In 1988, Patrick Read Johnson came up with the idea for Dragonheart and pitched it to producer Raffaella De Laurentiis a year later. Johnson proposed the film's concept to De Laurentiis, describing it as "The Skin Game with a dragon in it...or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Dragon". He wanted "the idea of a dragon and a knight conning villages for money" because he thought the concept was "not only funny, but kind of sweet". According to Johnson, before the film was ever called Dragonheart and had the element of the shared heart, it began with the premise of Johnson's manager Melinda Jason also managed screenplay writer Charles Edward Pogue, who previously wrote for David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly and was working on adapting A Princess of Mars for Disney. When meeting for drinks in Bora Bora, Johnson pitched the idea for Dragonheart to Pogue, and he agreed to work on the film. Johnson already had the story's beginning and end in mind but not much of the middle, so he and Pogue collaborated on the script, developing the characters and the Old Code while working the Arthurian myth into the story. Pogue described the story's themes as "a disillusioned man's struggle to recapture his idealism" and "the attempt to maintain one's passion in the cesspool of the world". Creating the backstory of the dragon culture and spiritual afterlife proved challenging for Pogue; he had to think of Draco's