ROBIN HOOD PRINCE OF THIEVES
Valentine’s Day, 1990. James G. Robinson and his team at Morgan Creek Productions have a matter of hours to snap up one of the hottest scripts in Hollywood – a bold take on the Robin Hood story by British co-writers Pen Densham and John Watson the former has summed up as “Robin Hood, à la Raiders.” “We thought it was commercial, distinctive and great fun,” recalls company president David Nicksay, who exhorted Robinson, Morgan Creek’s founder and owner, to make the deal. By 10pm that evening, the deal was done. Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves was theirs – for a princely sum of $1.2m.
The urgency was understandable. Densham and Watson’s script was one of five Robin Hood treatments then doing the rounds, with both 20th Century Fox and Tri-Star Pictures eager to get their own versions of the legend into production. All the competing Robins had one man in mind to play Nottingham’s iconic outlaw: 35-year-old Kevin Costner, riding high off the back of such box-office and . Morgan Creek’s pitch to the star had an extra bonus, though – the chance to collaborate with director Kevin Reynolds, a close friend who had given him an early break in 1985 comedy and who had recently helped him out by taking some second unit off his hands on his upcoming passion project, .
