Go Behind the Scenes of Robin Hood

Russell Crowe: “When the first script came to me, I said I’d do Robin Hood, but I wanted to do a fresh version, where we revitalise every part of the story and I thought that if you’re going to revitalise Robin Hood, it can be done on the basis that whatever you thought you knew about Robin Hood, it was a previously understandable mistake.”

Ridley Scott: “It is the beginnings of how the man becomes known as Robin the Hood. You don’t really get that until the last few minutes. When you realize that ‘Ah, this is who he is’. Let’s say we might presume there’s a sequel. 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.”

Russell Crowe: “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. 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.”

Ridley Scott: “It was f***ing 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.”