{"id":642615,"date":"2026-06-17T00:54:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T00:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/642615\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T00:54:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T00:54:12","slug":"death-of-robin-hood-director-on-casting-hugh-jackman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/642615\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Death of Robin Hood’ Director on Casting Hugh Jackman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOn screen, Robin Hood has been robbing from the rich to feed the poor for nearly as long as movies have been made. The likes of Errol Flynn, Kevin Costner and Sean Connery have put their imprint on the character, portraying him as everything from a swashbuckling rogue to a battle-hardened crusader. Even Walt Disney got in on the action, depicting Sherwood Forest as an animated haven for anthropomorphic foxes, bears and chickens. Given the dozens of films about Robin Hood, Michael Sarnoski<\/a>, the director of \u201cPig\u201d and \u201cA Quiet Place: Day One,\u201d worried there wasn\u2019t much left to say about the famous thief. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI loved the legend since I was a little kid,\u201d Sarnoski says. \u201cBut I loved the ballad about the death of Robin Hood<\/a> almost as much. This idea that this immortal folkloric figure also has a very human, simple, quiet death stayed with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSo Sarnoski used the story of Robin Hood\u2019s last days as a jumping off point to offer a very different look at the outlaw, one that treated him as a haunted, guilt-stricken figure whose criminality is a matter of survival, not charity. It\u2019s a savage take on the fable that is more aligned with \u201cUnforgiven\u201d or \u201cValhalla Rising\u201d than the kind-hearted, tights-wearing merry men from so many movies. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe earliest written mention of Robin Hood is in this history book called the Scotichronicon, which is basically a chronicle of Scotland, and it calls him a murderous cutthroat who common folk are so fond of glorifying,\u201d Sarnoski says over a lunch at a midtown Manhattan restaurant. \u201cThat made me think about what a medieval bandit would really be like. They would not have existed in a glamorous happy world where they were worried about the poor.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tAs he researched the story, Sarnoski listened to lectures on medieval history. \u201cOne of the teachers remarked that we think of medieval battles as knights on horses, but most of the time it was just peasants beating each other to death with shovels and rocks.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tAudiences will see Sarnoski\u2019s mournful vision on Friday when \u201cThe Death of Robin Hood\u201d opens in theaters. It stars Hugh Jackman<\/a> as a murderous, thuggish Robin, long past his prime and hunted by the people he once terrorized and robbed. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHugh understood the character,\u201d Sarnoski says. \u201cHe could bring the viciousness that I needed, like we\u2019ve seen him do in \u2018Prisoners\u2019 and \u2018Logan,\u2019 but he\u2019s such a kind, warm person that no matter how many kids he kills and horrible things he does, you believe he can be redeemed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tProduced for roughly $20 million, \u201cThe Death of Robin Hood\u201d was a scrappy affair. It shot for 30 days in remote sections of Northern Ireland with the cast and crew braving the cold to bring an authentically gritty story to the screen. There\u2019s action in the film, but most of those sequences, including a bravura fight scene set in a farmhouse that\u2019s been set ablaze, take place in the first 30 minutes. The rest of the movie is meditative, following Robin as he recovers from his wounds in a remote priory, where a mysterious healer (Jodie Comer) nurses him back to health. They grow close and their relationship takes an unexpected turn. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t want this to be some $100 million action-adventure,\u201d Sarnoski says. \u201cI want to make a movie for a responsible amount that can be weird and unique and have some edges.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThat meant getting buy-in on the title. Sarnoski wrote the script on spec and the film was packaged with Jackman and Comer before A24 came on board. Some potential buyers argued audiences would be turned off. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEarly on people were worried we were spoiling the movie or that it\u2019s a bummer of a title,\u201d Sarnoski says. \u201cFor me it felt like a chapter in an old book. I took a lot of liberties and changed the characters. I explored some nuances. I\u2019m not trying to trick the audience about the tone of the story. And when A24 came on board, they eventually were like \u2018we can market the shit out of this title.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\tLike \u201cPig,\u201d the Nicolas Cage revenge drama that put Sarnoski on the map, \u201cThe Death of Robin Hood\u201d is atmospheric and assured. It\u2019s beautifully shot with Sarnoski\u2019s camera capturing a rugged, mountainous landscape that\u2019s as unrelenting and unforgiving as the film\u2019s tortured protagonist. Given the darkness of his work, you\u2019d expect Sarnoski to be an idiosyncratic Lynch-ian figure or a Peckinpah-ish man\u2019s man. Instead, he\u2019s bespectacled and soft-spoken, dressed in a blazer that makes him look more than an antiquarian than an auteur as he eats steak tartare with truffles. <\/p>\n

\n\tSarnoski, who grew up Milwaukee and went to Yale, got his start making low-budget short films and documentaries. When he got his big break with \u201cPig\u201d in 2021, he worried he\u2019d didn\u2019t have what it took to call the shots on a feature.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m a pretty anxious person in my daily life and always second-guessing myself,\u201d Sarnoski says. \u201cBut I remember walking onto the set the first day of \u2018Pig,\u2019 and there were 10 seconds where I was like, \u201cHoly shit, Nic Cage is walking up dressed as a character that I created.\u2019 And then I just went to work and all that other shit just faded away.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSarnoski has found himself in demand after \u201cA Quiet Place: Day One\u201d scored at the box office and \u201cPig\u201d was embraced by critics. Having offered his darker take on Robin Hood, he will next re-team with A24 on a live-action film adaptation of the video game\u00a0\u201cDeath Stranding.\u201d The story unfolds in a post-apocalyptic America that is ravaged by supernatural creatures. Sarnoski recently turned in a second draft of the script and hopes to shoot the picture in Iceland and Northern Ireland next year. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI want it to feel big, but also offbeat and character driven,\u201d Sarnoski says. \u201cThis takes place in the world of the video game, but I have my own set of characters. There are some like overlapping characters that fans will be excited to see, but it\u2019s very much my own story within this universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter that, Sarnoski has an idea for a smaller, low-budget personal project. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI want to keep floating between the studio system and the indie world,\u201d Sarnoski says. \u201cIf I can have a career like that, I\u2019ll feel very spoiled.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tHere are five films Sarnoski says inspired \u201cThe Death of Robin Hood.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t1.) Valhalla Rising\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI love the physical brutality of the story and how it is set against the bleakness of the landscape. You just feel cold and alone watching it. And then there are these really intense moments of violence that are abrupt and unpleasant. That\u2019s how I approached the violence in \u2018Robin Hood.\u2019 I want it to leave a sour taste in your mouth.\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\t2.) The\u00a0Virgin Spring\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt takes place in the same time period as \u2018Robin Hood.\u2019 There\u2019s a realness to it. You feel like it captures what it must have been like then and not in some cliched old-timey version of the medieval era that Hollywood used to make. And it\u2019s also a deeply human tragedy. It\u2019s impossible not to be moved by it.\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\t3.) The Revenant\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe film conveys the danger of nature. Everything around the characters is designed to kill them so they are never safe. I wanted that kind of intensity for the first 30 minutes of my movie. I wanted you to feel you could never let your guard down.\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\t4.) Days of Heaven\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI thought a lot about this movie for the scenes in the Priory. I tried to convey the same sense of stumbling upon this unlikely community that has created a world of its own that\u2019s beautiful and serene, but there\u2019s this fragility to what\u2019s been built. It could all collapse at any moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t5.) Phantom Thread\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRobin Hood spends part of the film in bed and sick with Jodie\u2019s character looking after him. That also caused them to build this unexpected understanding. They trust each other but that trust manifests in a peculiar way that takes the story in a darker direction much like \u2018The Phantom Thread.’\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On screen, Robin Hood has been robbing from the rich to feed the poor for nearly as long…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,59392,126963,2839,136739,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-642615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-hugh-jackman","tag-michael-sarnoski","tag-movies","tag-the-death-of-robin-hood","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}