For a while, it looked like award-winning TV director Otto Bathurst, a veteran of shows such as Luthor and Peaky Blinders, would make his film directorial debut with Kevin Costner pic Midnight Delivery. That never quite panned out, but he is preparing to make prison thriller Three Seconds. And Lionsgate has decided he might just be the man to explore an icon’s early days with **Robin Hood: Origins.
Just one of the 326 Hood films riding through development at the moment, Robin Hood: Origins comes from Knights Of The Round Table: King Arthur writer Joby Harold, who has pumped out a script that purports to show how the title character returns from the Crusades to discover Sherwood Forest and the surrounding area teeming with corruption and crime. So he forms a group of outlaws and becomes a force for good. If that sounds a little bit like what Ridley Scott’s 2010 take on the character already looked at (along with several other trips to the forest), you’re not alone. We’re promised a gritty, realistic take this time, but we’ll wait and see how different it is.
Lionsgate is hoping to have the film shooting early next year, especially since rivals such as Disney, Sony and Warner Bros. all have competing projects looking to get the jump on it. As for Three Seconds, that’ll find Luke Evans and David Oyelowo in the tale of a man left in a dangerous prison after an FBI sting operation is suddenly abandoned.