Universal has released another trailer for Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, and it’s probably the best one so far. We start by seeing Robin Hood as a kid who witnesses his father being murdered by the powers that be, and from this an outlaw is born. One with a dodgy Yorkshire accent. Anyhow, there’s lots of action, arrows being fired in all directions, and a great big epic battle on a beach. It looks like Gladiator 2.0 will be rather good.

Oscar winner Russell Crowe stars as the legendary figure known by generations as “Robin Hood,” whose exploits have endured in popular mythology and ignited the imagination of those who share his spirit of adventure and righteousness. In 13th century England, Robin and his band of marauders confront corruption in a local village and lead an uprising against the crown that will forever alter the balance of world power. And whether thief or hero, one man from humble beginnings will become an eternal symbol of freedom for his people.

Robin Hood stars Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Mark Strong and will be released on May 14th. Mark said date in the nearest tree stump.

Yahoo! has provided the brand new trailer for Robin Hood, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe.

I think we all know that this film bears a striking resemblance to Gladiator. But don’t you think Ridley Scott knows that also? I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and (like Dan Trachtenberg from the Totally Rad Show said) assume that Scott is going to bring something new to the table. The man is one of the most influential directors in history; I’d like to think that he’s willing to challenge himself and not revisit similar territory unless he truly believes he has something fresh to contribute.

Check out the trailer below. Robin Hood opens in theaters on May 14th, 2010.

/Film got their hands on a new poster for Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood. We’ve been getting quite a lot of promotional material recently, with the release of two trailers and now a poster. From what I’ve seen I’m quite looking forward to this.

Oscar winner Russell Crowe stars as the legendary figure known by generations as “Robin Hood,” whose exploits have endured in popular mythology and ignited the imagination of those who share his spirit of adventure and righteousness. In 13th century England, Robin and his band of marauders confront corruption in a local village and lead an uprising against the crown that will forever alter the balance of world power. And whether thief or hero, one man from humble beginnings will become an eternal symbol of freedom for his people.

We got our first trailer for Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood last week and it was cool, but I was slightly underwhelmed. I have no doubt the film will be good, I just not a fan of historical films using rock-type music in trailers.

Today Yahoo! released a new international trailer and it’s miles better than the first trailer. We get a lot more information on the story, more Cate Blanchett and more dialogue. We also have music that suits the footage.

Oscar winner Russell Crowe stars as the legendary figure known by generations as “Robin Hood,” whose exploits have endured in popular mythology and ignited the imagination of those who share his spirit of adventure and righteousness. In 13th century England, Robin and his band of marauders confront corruption in a local village and lead an uprising against the crown that will forever alter the balance of world power. And whether thief or hero, one man from humble beginnings will become an eternal symbol of freedom for his people.

Our very first look at moving footage from Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood has appeared online in the form of a trailer. It’s a bit different to what I expected but it looks interesting. It starts off mysterious with a dark forest and wolves, but then Russell Crowse rises from the water screaming and that then all the action kicks in. I’m liking how Ridley Scott has filmed the close-up/slo-mo arrows firing.

Oscar winner Russell Crowe stars as the legendary figure known by generations as “Robin Hood,” whose exploits have endured in popular mythology and ignited the imagination of those who share his spirit of adventure and righteousness. In 13th century England, Robin and his band of marauders confront corruption in a local village and lead an uprising against the crown that will forever alter the balance of world power. And whether thief or hero, one man from humble beginnings will become an eternal symbol of freedom for his people.

In the latest issue of Total Film magazine there is a 36 page special on James Cameron’s Avatar, and while the film is the main topic of discussion they threw in a few questions on Terminator Salvation and the upcoming Alien prequel which Ridley Scott will be directing.

What did you think of Terminator Salvation?
It didn’t quite have the emotional power that it should have had. I thought Sam was great, very powerful, and Christian… people have criticised him for being one-note but that’s part of the character. He was playing a guy who’s furiously dedicated to the survival of the human species. Maybe more could have been done with that. In T2 we showed the consequences. It drove Sarah insane.

Was McG the man for the job?
McG’s a strong shooter and he honoured the iconic touchstones of the first two movies – almost too much. I actually felt Salvation is like Aliens, in that it’s a fan making a sequel to a movie they loved.

It must be tough for Cameron to see other people’s take on his creation, especially as both T3 and Salvation have been disappointing. The rights are being auctioned off at some point this month so hopefully a competent studio buy them, instead of two shady producers like last time.

Now for another sci-fi franchise, Alien. Earlier this year Ridley Scott decided to return to the franchise after a 30 year absence, and it may have been Cameron who inspired him.

Ridley Scott is talking about doing an Alien prequel
That’s a strange move for him. I mean, Ridley and I talked over lunch maybe 10 years ago and I said, “Look, I’ll write it and produce it, you direct it, it’ll ****ing kick ass!” And he was like, “Yeah, let’s do it!” And nothing happened. And then they did Alien vs. Predator, and that kind of pissed in the soup. I think Ridley really should do science fiction. He made the two most iconic science-fiction films of the 20th century. When he came to visit me [on the set of Avatar] I said to him, “Quit ****ing around with these wine movies in the south of France, make another science fiction film.” And he saw the technique we were using and got all fired up about it. He turned to his producer and said, “Why am I doing this Robin Hood? I should be doing science fiction!”

A while back it was announced that Ridley Scott was interested in directing a movie version of Monopoly. This raised a few questions. Firstly, why would the director of Alien and Blade Runner be interested in a board game movie? And secondly, what the hell would it be about? Well producer Frank Beddor recently revealed details of the story he pitched that got Ridley Scott interested.

From the L.A Times:

I created a comedic, lovable loser who lives in Manhattan and works at a real estate company and he’s not very good at his job but he’s great at playing Monopoly. And the world record for playing is 70 straight days – over 1,600 hours – and he wanted to try to convince his friends to help him break that world record. They think he is crazy. They kid him about this girl and they’re playing the game and there’s this big fight. And he’s holding a Chance card and after they’ve left he says, ‘Damn, I wanted to use that Chance card,’ and he throws it down. He falls asleep and then he wakes up in the morning and he’s holding the Chance card, and he thinks, ‘That’s odd.’”

“He’s all groggy and he goes down to buy some coffee and he reaches into his pocket and all he has is Monopoly money. All this Monopoly money pours out. He’s confused and embarrassed and the girl reaches across the counter and says, ‘That’s OK.’ And she gives him change in Monopoly money. He walks outside and he’s in this very vibrant place, Monopoly City, and he’s just come out of a Chance Shop. As it goes on, he takes on the evil Parker Brothers in the game of Monolopy.”

He continues to say that he came up with this story a years ago and it may be different now as Pamela Pettner is currently working on her version of script, which i’m happy about. ‘Waking up in Monopoly land’ isn’t very creative at all. I hope he didn’t get paid for it as the dog board piece could probably have come up with something better.

One interesting thing about the Robin Hood movie when it was first announced was that we would apparently see the story from the Sheriff of Nottingham’s point of view, and therefore for the first time it would be Robin Hood who is seen to be the villain. Another interesting point was that Russell Crowe would play both characters, with Ridley Scott saying it would be “a good old clever adjustment of characters. One becomes the other. It changes.”

However, script re-writes occurred and now we are getting the usual Robin Hood story, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing if the end result is great historical epic, but it would have been cool to see something unique from a story that has been retold over and over again.

The writers of the original script, Ethan Reiff and Cy Voris, spoke to CineFools about the movie, and while things have changed, they aren’t complaining.

Nottingham was about us both wanting to see a new and different version of a classic old story retold. The truth is the movie Ridley Scott made doesn’t have all that much to do with the script we sold to Universal, in the midst of a bidding war with various other Hollywood studios, about 3 years ago. Our script was told from the Sheriff of Nottingham’s POV (thereby the title), and Russell Crowe signed on to play the part of the Sheriff, who was the hero of our screenplay. There are a few things remaining in the movie which had their origin in our script, like including Eleanor of Aquitaine (mother of Richard the Lionhearted and Prince, later King, John) as a key character in a Robin Hood movie for the first time (at least that I know of), plus the movie would never have been made to being with if Russell Crowe hadn’t signed on to play the Sheriff in our original script. I guess for us, without having seen the movie, it’s a mix of triumph and frustration. Triumph because we got the ball rolling that led to a massive Medieval period piece being made with an excellent cast by arguably one of the greatest directors in movie history, but also frustration in that the world will never see the original movie we wrote. But we did get paid, so I’m not complaining. Once they bought it, Universal had the right to do whatever they wanted with our script.

I think the dual role for Russell Crowe may have been too risky for Universal. I’m sure critics and movie lovers would have liked it, however I don’t think the general audience would have appreciated the mind games.

Back in July it was was announced that Sir Ridley Scott would be returning to the Alien franchise to direct an Alien prequel. His 1979 Alien movie spawned three sequels, however he wasn’t interested in directing any of them, which makes his return 30 years on quite intriguing.

Scott recently spoke to Empire and hinted at when it would take place and said he was looking forward to the prequel as it “is kind of interesting”:

“It’s a brand new box of tricks,” said Sir Ridley. “We know what the road map is, and the screenplay is now being put on paper. The prequel will be a while ago. It’s very difficult to put a year on Alien, but [for example] if Alien was towards the end of this century, then the prequel story will take place thirty years prior.”

“I never thought I’d look forward to a sequel,” said Sir Ridley. “But a prequel is kind of interesting. I’m looking forward to doing that.”

A few weeks ago Entertainment Tonight took us behind the scenes of Iron Man 2, and now we have the pleasure of seeing footage from their set visit to Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood movie. As ET are all about ’showbiz’ we see the presenter asking Cate Blanchett how many kissing scenes she has with Russell Crowe, but in-between all the rubbish we get to see a few shots of action, and a look at an epic battle on a beach.

While Universal haven’t given the film an official title yet, they have released the synopsis which can be read below:

From Collider:

Oscar winner Russell Crowe stars as the legendary figure known by generations as “Robin Hood,” whose exploits have endured in popular mythology and ignited the imagination of those who share his spirit of adventure and righteousness. In 13th century England, Robin and his band of marauders confront corruption in a local village and lead an uprising against the crown that will forever alter the balance of world power. And whether thief or hero, one man from humble beginnings will become an eternal symbol of freedom for his people.

The untitled Robin Hood adventure chronicles the life of an expert archer, previously interested only in self-preservation, from his service in King Richard’s army against the French. Upon Richard’s death, Robin travels to Nottingham, a town suffering from the corruption of a despotic sheriff and crippling taxation, where he falls for the spirited widow Lady Marion (Oscar winner Cate Blanchett), a woman skeptical of the identity and motivations of this crusader from the forest. Hoping to earn the hand of Maid Marion and salvage the village, Robin assembles a gang whose lethal mercenary skills are matched only by its appetite for life. Together, they begin preying on the indulgent upper class to correct injustices under the sheriff.

With their country weakened from decades of war, embattled from the ineffective rule of the new king and vulnerable to insurgencies from within and threats from afar, Robin and his men heed a call to ever greater adventure. This unlikeliest of heroes and his allies set off to protect their country from slipping into bloody civil war and return glory to England once more.