The names Disney and Robin Hood in the same sentence may well cast your minds immediately to an animated fox causing trouble for a hapless lion and his snake henchman. That may all be about to change, however, since Disney has put a brand new Robin Hood project into development. The Mouse House has snapped up Nottingham And Hood: a spec screenplay by newcomer Brandon Barker.
There are few details so far about the thrust of the story, but buckles, it's fair to say, are likely to be swashed. The scuttlebutt is that Barker's is a revisionist take on the venerable English legend, and that Disney are looking at a Pirates Of The Caribbean tone and a possible new franchise.
Nottingham And Hood is, of course, not the only Robin Hood project currently in the works. Sony recently paid top dollar for **Hood, from a pitch by Cory Goodman (Priest, The Last Witch Hunter) and Jeremy Lott. That, too, is being touted as not only a franchise, but a shared-universe affair including spin-off Merry Men movies.
It's a battle of the Hoods then, strangely echoing the situation in the early '90s when Kevin Reynold's Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves (with Kevin Costner and Alan Rickman) and John Irvin's Robin Hood (with Patrick Bergin and Edward Fox) arrived more-or-less simultaneously. One of those did rather better than the other.
With Ridley Scott's Robin Hood and the BBC TV series still in very recent memory (not to mention a Doctor Who episode this year), we could soon find ourselves with Nottingham outlaw fatigue syndrome. Neither of the new projects yet has a director, cast or start date though, so we're safe for a while.