“A crazy shoot”: Alexandre Astier tells us about Kaamelott – Second part (Excluded)

Find our royal audience with Arthur in the new issue of Première, on newsstands this Wednesday.

Four years later Kaamelott: First PartFrance’s most famous saga is back in cinemas. A return in two stages, with Kaamelott – Second part (part 1) in theaters this Wednesday, and part 2 at the end of 2026. A double ration that Alexandre Astier presents to us in the new issue of Firston newsstands this Wednesday, October 22.

“For me, it’s really a triptych, a bit like these three-panel icons. There are three distinct stages in this story: the return of the king, the departure on the quest and the Grail. Afterwards, the duration of each part, I don’t care a bit (…) The second part is the story of people who go on an adventure, from the Round Table, to prove their worth, each in their own way (…) It’s very dance, very dense and I knew that I would have the material for two features.“

Although it comes out in two parts, Alexandre Astier plans Kaamelott – Second part as a single film, which he therefore wanted to shoot in one go. Particularly so that the actors don’t have time to age. Especially the youngest, like his son James, 13, who since the shots “has gained 20 centimeters, he no longer has the same voice at all“.

“My filming story is just one film. A very, very long film, but only one. It allowed me to do a crazy shoot, something lasting more than eight months in several countries with people showing up, then leaving, while we moved and other guys arrived, to pick up a story that had started earlier… People could then watch both in one go, like a long film with an intermission. And the third part, if it one day exists, I would like it to mark a step. I would like us to see the differences with 2, from every point of view.”

After the success of the first part, which attracted more than 2.6 million spectators in theaters despite Covid, it again benefited from a large budget for KV2: “A little more than double the first part, there’s more VFX, more costumes, more everything“. A pharaonic project where Astier, incapable of delegating, continues to do everything: play the hero, write, direct, edit, compose the music…

During this long interview, Alexandre Astier also talks about his desire to release a long version of KV1, the projects he would like to develop before launching into KV3the absence of Franck Pitiot alias Perceval, or the dimension taken by the saga and its relationship to Arthurian mythology.