He's about to hit our screens as the Empire's scowling Orson Krennic in Rogue One. And Ben Mendelsohn clearly has the taste for big screen villainy, as he's now sorting out a deal to play the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Origins.
Taron Egerton is Robin in the new movie, leading a cast that so far includes Jamie Foxx as Little John, Eve Hewson as Maid Marian and Jamie Dornan as Will Scarlett.
With Otto Bathurst in the director's chair and Joby Harold on script duty, the new movie is being touted as a dark and gritty take on the oft-adapted legend, though it'll include familiar elements such as the main man as a Crusades veteran who takes up arms against corrupt English lords. And the Sheriff is the man he has to defeat. "There’s no singing and riding through the glen in this; it’s a real war movie," Egerton told Collider recently. "Quite an anti-establishment war movie, I would say... It’s dark. And Robin’s not perfect in it, either, which is what I like about it. He’s not a classic hero, he makes mistakes."
Mendelsohn faces a challenge in defining a Sheriff after Alan Rickman set the screen on fire back in 1991's Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves. Origins will be on our screens in 2018. Rogue One, meanwhile arrives in the UK on Thursday.