Crazy Bollywood project has been creeping along at such a slow pace we've had to push back our shoot dates till later in the year. The biggest hold-up has been the script which is stuck in development hell. Investors love it...they just want to change everything.I was initially bummed by having to wrap my head around big story notes (some sound, some insane), until I came across this Vulture article on the strange evolution of the spec script "Nottingham". The article focuses on the tensions between Crowe and director Ridley Scott but more compelling is how the 2006 Ethan Reiff & Cyrus Voris script that was loved around town morphed into Russell Crowe's tepidly received "Robin Hood". Basically, the development process stripped the original spec of its hook ("Nottingham" was told from the point of view of the Sheriff of Nottingham with him being a good guy and Robin Hood kind of a jerk), a change that shifted the project's tone and humor towards a more straight, taciturn "Gladiator" style retelling. Read the full story here and marvel at the star-centered development process that takes a cute concept, attracts a star and super-director combo, and then proceeds to excise all that's original about the script in successive rewrites at a cost of $6.7 million.
