It’s been filming for a while now, but it’s only now emerged that Danny Huston has signed on to play Richard The Lionheart in Ridley Scott’s still-not-officially-titled Robin Hood movie. Huston was last seen as the generally evil William Stryker in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
It’ll be interesting to see how he plays the role, as it’s fair to say that previous screen incarnations haven’t exactly been accurate. However as Richard is used in most Robin Hood movies as the film’s deus ex machina, who comes back from the Crusades at the end of the film to sort everything out and refill the power vacuum that his departure left behind, an accurate portrayal hasn’t exactly been essential.
Huston’s a bit of a departure from normal Richard The Lionhearts, which tends to be a cameo role for a well known star (Sean Connery in Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, Richard Harris in Robin And Marian), although as Ridley Scott’s film is a reimagining of the legend, we may be getting a slightly different medieval king than the one we’re used to.