The upcoming English civil war film To Kill A King has had more than its fair share of drama whilst in production. First they lost Ewan McGregor from the role of Cromwell, then the whole production ground to a halt when part of the finance fell through – forcing the film's star Dougray Scott to pay for the set to be removed from the grounds of Hampton Court Palace.

'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,' director Mike Barker tells The Guardian. '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.'

Now it seems that the fim's teeny budgets have also forced the filmmakers to be ultra frugal when it comes to the battle scenes. Their solution? There won't be any. The film's producer Kevin Loader explains; '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. Onscreen battles have to be incredibly simple or you can't understand them.'

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

© Emap Consumer Media Limited 2002