If you've stopped laughing at the idea of Ridley Scott co-running MGM with his brother Tony, prepare to start up all over again. While promoting next month's Robin Hood, Scott has finally gone on record about the long-rumored original script called Nottingham with words that would surely make Harvey Weinstein proud. For those of you who don't remember: that screenplay supposedly saw Robin Hood as the villain, Sheriff Nottingham as the hero and had an ending not dissimilar to The Dark Knight (Robin Hood is killed, Nottingham continues to use his visage to keep hope alive amongst the less fortunate). Says star Russell Crowe: "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." Sounds reasonable. What did you think, Ridley?
"It was f*cking ridiculous. 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."
Nope, it sure doesn't. But then again, neither does making a sequel to Gladiator and calling it Robin Hood.
ยท Behind the scenes of a brand new 'Robin Hood' [Times Online via The Playlist]