Upcoming English Civil War film To Kill A King has no battle scenes because it only had four extras.

The film stars Dougray Scott and will be released later this year.

Scott had to help pay for the project himself when the filmmakers ran into financial problems.

Director Mike Barker told www.film.guardian.co.uk: "On the last day of filming, when we went bankrupt, we didn't even have enough money to remove our 200ft set of Whitehall Palace from Hampton Court.

"We'd dug all the lawns up and we couldn't replace them because we couldn't pay for turf. I mean this is the Queen's palace! It was really embarrassing. Dougray came up with the money to pay for the set removal."

Producer Kevin Loader says the film's budget also forced them to forget about any battle scenes.

He said: "The opening credit sequence is set at Naseby's aftermath, so there are bodies on the battlefield.

"But I think the narrative of a battle is quite difficult to translate to a film and actually not that interesting. On-screen battles have to be incredibly simple or you can't understand them."

Barker added: "We couldn't really have 20,000 people running down a hill like in Braveheart. Not least because we only have four extras."

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