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Ridley Scott to Direct Russell Crowe in Nottingham - A Revisionist Robin Hood

by Alex Billington
April 30, 2007
Source: Variety

You never thought it would happen. They're bringing back Robin Hood! The famous director Ridley Scott (Gladiator, Alien, Blade Runner) is going to direct the famous Russell Crowe in a drama titled Nottingham, which is a revisionist take on the Robin Hood tale. Crowe stars as the Sheriff of Nottingham who is a noble and brave lawman who labors for a corrupt king and engages in a love triangle with Maid Marion and Robin Hood. Production will start next year for a likely late 2008 or 2009 release, but I'm sure it's well worth the wait!

Apparently there isn't even a full script ready, only a spec script, but I guess it was exciting enough. Scott and Crowe have worked together quite a bit, including on Gladiator, A Good Year and the upcoming American Gangster. And we've seen Ridley Scott in the news a lot recently, with mention of the Leo DiCaprio CIA film he's working on first called Body of Lies and his upcoming film opening in August, American Gangster.

Filed under Movie News

From around the web:

http://blogging.la David Markland

"Apparently there isn't even a full script ready, only a spec script..." A spec script is a full script. It may not be the shooting script, but it's still enough to get the ball rolling on attaching stars and getting a ball park figure on budget and scope. It'll be interesting to see who they get for Robin Hood... for some reason I'm picturing a younger version of Guy Pearce, as the plot already sounds reminiscent in some ways of LA Confidential...
mcm

look what they initially had to work with in 'gladiator,' 26 pages...
http://blogging.la David Markland

To clarify, the 26 pages for Gladiator was probably just a treatment or outline. A spec (speculative) script just means it was written outside of any existing contracts, written on the authors own time in the hopes that somebody might like it. If they're paid to write it ahead of time, it isn't speculative.
Thaddeus Nurptopolis

The Sheriff of Nottingham will be a good guy, huh? And Robin will be cuckolded? Knowing Hollywood, Robin will be a blond-haired blue-eyed villain, a proto-Nazi trying to stir up trouble in the multicultural paradise of England in the Middle Ages. Or - if not Robin - then the villains will be such. Has Samuel Jackson been signed yet for the role of Friar Tuck? LOL
Sharpshooter

Typical elderly 'enfant terrible' type director and so in tune with our times - I am sure the sherrif will be a loveable banker type robbing the poor, in their own best interests of course, to pay the rich. Of course in typical Hollywood fashion he will import ***stars*** for all major roles - yes can see Samuel Jackson being cast as Friar Tuck or possibly Maid Marion!!!!
John Harper

There isn't much left of Sherwood Forest, and what there is, Robin Hood would hardly recognize. Farmland, pasture, coal mines and urban sprawl have claimed most of the trees. Where there is greenwood -- scattered pockets like islands adrift on the dull Midlands plain -- it consists mostly of dense stands of Mediterranean pine, imported and planted by the Government after World War I as a timber cash crop.