Ridley Scott's still-not-officially-titled Robin Hood has added another name to its already-impressive cast list, with the news that Danny Huston has signed on to play Richard the Lionheart.
Last seen getting his bad guy on as General Stryker in X-Men Origins: Wolverin****e, Huston will this time be playing a character who's (traditionally anyway) a good guy in the Robin Hood universe. Richard the Lionheart was the King whose departure for the crusades, and subsequent capture and imprisonment, left the power vacuum filled by the cowardly lion Prince John and the big fat grey wolf the Sheriff of Nottingham (Ed: Some mistake, surely?). This being a reworking of the franchise, it's always possible that the Lionheart's a rather more complex character - as indeed he was in real life.
For a start, he hardly spent any of his life in England, based chiefly in his mother's duchy of Aquitaine in France, so Sean Connery's Scottish accent in Prince of Thieves is dead wrong. Secondly, he was, they reckon, gay, so Patrick Stewart's ladykiller version in Men in Tights is out. And thirdly, as kings go he wasn't much cop, what with the endless crusading and the lack of any real work at home. So maybe the splendidly sinister Huston's a good fit after all (although we'd always seen him as more of a Prince John really).
Robin Hood: Yet To Be Formally, 100% Titled is out on May 14, 2010 in the UK and is still currently filming.