Itself a heavily adapted version of Sit Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, The Once and Future King in turn provided material for high-profile adaptations during the years after its publication. The musical Camelot is one noteworthy example: centered on the characters of Arthur, Lancelot, and Guenever, this spectacular show premiered in 1960. Yet because White's novel can shift so strongly in tone, mood, and theme, it was open to forms of adaptation very different from star-studded Broadway musicals. (Camelot was notable in its early runs for featuring Richard Burton and Julie Andrews as Arthur and Guenever, respectively.) Drawing from the whimsical first book of The Once and Future King, Disney adapted The Sword in the Stone into a 1963 animated feature, playing up the comic and supernatural elements of the young Arthur's education under Merlyn.
Yet the project of reinterpreting the mythology of King Arthur for modern audiences did not end with White, or even with the writers and directors who interpreted The Once and Future King in new media. Starting in the early 1970s, British author Mary Stewart began publishing an Arthurian Saga of her own. Much of her writing would focus on Merlyn; indeed, Stewart constructed a set of novels that came to be known as the "Merlyn Trilogy" (The Crystal Cave in 1970, The Hollow Hills in 1973, and The Last Enchantment in 1979). Her emphasis on Arthurian characters who, though not truly "minor," receive less attention than Arthur, Guenever, and Lancelot in The Once and Future King continued with The Wicked Day in 1983. With this volume, Stewart focused her energies on Arthur's son Mordred, delving into the backstory of the traditional villain of the Arthurian narrative.
The adventures of King Arthur have continued to inspire filmmakers as well. In fact, the fortunes of the Round Table have yielded one live-action film that is a comedy classic: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). This farce is (very loosely) based on the questing lifestyle of Arthur and his knights, but is mostly notable for its moments of absurd violence, its strange logic games, and its ridiculous portrayals of, well, pretty much every characters on screen. Continuing the cycle of adaptations across media, Monty Python and the Holy Grail would go on to inspire the much-admired Broadway musical Spamalot, which premiered in 2005. More serious attempts to adapt Arthur's saga—particularly the summer blockbuster versions that appeared in 2004 and 2017—have been panned by the critics.
