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I happened to stumble upon what became the most interesting piece of news I read over the weekend by simply fiddling with my RSS feeds. It turns out the Ridley Scott is working on a new Robin Hood flick with a twist, instead of being the hero, Hood will be the bad guy and The Sheriff of Nottingham is going to be the hero. But thatÂ’s not the interesting bit, it is currently rumoured that Russell Crowe is scheduled to play both Robin and The Sheriff in dual roles! Whilst I have no doubt that Crowe could play either role well, I don’t understand why they want him to play both. How would this work? Looking back over other films where the lead actor has spawned multiple roles, such as Austin Powers’ Mike Myers, The Nutty Professor’s Eddie Murphy…well just Eddie Murphy in general, they don’t seem to work out so well. Who knows? This is just a rumour that is doing the rounds, perhaps it’ll never come to fruition, perhaps it’ll work well. Time will tell. The film, titled ‘Nottingham’ is due for release in November 2009.
Update: Whilst looking for that release date I have read that the in the film the Sheriff and Robin Hood are one in the same person. That is an interesting take on the franchise and it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.
In some tragic news, Paul Newman passed away yesterday. The actor that I knew best from ‘The Color of Money’ will be greatly missed and leaves behind an impressive resume for future film generations to cherish. Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones.
Originally I was going to talk about Thor here, however since I’m a lazy so and so and managed to procrastinate on this post yesterday some more news has been released and so I’m going to talk about it all at once.
We shall still start with Thor which yesterday was announced had a new director, none other than British thespian and Shakespeare legend Kenneth Branagh. This is an interesting move isn’t it? There are rumours, (well you can’t call them rumours really can you?) that this will mainly be set is Asgard and deal with a teenage Thor who has to grow into his powers. Branaghs grasp of history and the English language should really help this title and give it some character.
Thor has also been set a release date, it’s due to be released on July 16th, 2010. But it’s not the only film that has a release date, lets look over Marvel’s release calendar. There’s Captain America due for release on May 5th, 2011, Iron Man 2 on May 7th, 2010 and the Avengers movie on July 16th, 2011.
But what about the rest of the cast of The Avengers? Ant-Man and the Wasp? Whilst they don’t want to over-do the cast list which is already bulging with Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man and Thor, surely they’ll want some T&A from the Wasp to grace the screen, no?
Marvel aren’t the only ones with their fingers in the pot, The Green Lantern has finally been green-lit, without a cast or a director but shooting is pencilled in for Spring 2009 for a 2010 release. What are your thoughts on who should sign onto this project?
Who said superhero movies would be the death of cinema?