With their film set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival later next month, Ridley Scott And Russell Crowe have revealed that their reimagining of the ‘Robin Hood’ tale may see more installments in the future.
“It is the beginnings of how the man becomes known as Robin the Hood,” Scott explains to the Times. “You don’t really get that until the last few minutes. When you realise that ‘Ah, this is who he is.’ Let’s say we might presume there’s a sequel.” Comparisons to the genesis of Batman in Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins” are made.
“Honestly, I thought why not have the potential for a sequel, particularly if it is a genre that you absolutely love and has never been fully explored? If there were to be a sequel to ‘Robin Hood,’ you would have a constant enemy throughout, King John, and you would follow his reign of 17 years, and the signing of Magna Carta could be Robin’s final act.”
Crowe and Scott also tore apart the film’s original concept which reportedly centered on a protagonist who was both the Sheriff of Nottingham and Robin Hood, with the prince of thieves portrayed as the villain. For morale sake, we’d avoid this next paragraph if you’re reading, Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris.
“When I read that particular script, and no disrespect to the guys who wrote it, but it kind of read like ‘CSI: Sherwood Forest’ to me,” explains Crowe. “And I just wasn’t into doing that. For a start, if you’re a public servant and the public, through taxes, is paying you to do a job, you’d better be well meaning. So it wasn’t interesting to me in that incarnation.”
“It was f***ing ridiculous,” added Scott. “It was terrible, a page-one rewrite. If you’re going to invest in a Robin Hood story, why call it ‘Nottingham’? You’d end up spending 80% of the publicity budget explaining why it’s ‘Nottingham’ and not just ‘Robin Hood.’ It doesn’t make any sense.”
Early comparisons to the trailers and pictures from “Robin Hood” with Crowe and Scott’s other period epic “Gladiator” seemingly didn’t go down well either.
“It doesn’t matter what we do, everybody always compares it to ‘Gladiator,’” Crowe smiles. “We do a little comedy set in the south of France [‘A Good Year’] and half the reviews had references to Gladiator. We do ‘American Gangster’ and ‘Body of Lies’ and there’s ‘Gladiator’ references, so you’re not going to win either way once you’ve made a movie like that. It’s 10 years old and it still gets played on primetime television; it’s just one of those films you have once in a career if you’re really, really lucky. So one way or the other we’re still going to get bashed for doing this and the comparisons will be made.”
“Basically, if ‘Gladiator’ was a metaphor for death, and possibly vengeance, then this is about the opposite, it’s about life, it’s about birth. All the characters you care about, their lives are changed for the positive by the end. The key thing is that it’s entertainment; it would be very disappointing if we’d made a dour version of ‘Robin Hood.’”
“Robin Hood” premieres at Cannes on May 12th before hitting theaters worldwide two days later.