Hugh Jackman transforms into a rugged“ ”Robin Hood in striking first look at ‘intense’ new film (exclusive)

Whether you are a scholar of English folklore with a framed map of Sherwood Forest in your home or someone who half-remembers seeing a Robin Hood movie at some point in your life (Sean Connery? Kevin Costner? Errol Flynn? A cartoon fox?), The Death of Robin Hood, starring Hugh Jackman, Jodie Comer, and Bill Skarsgård, is still made for you. The new film, from A24 and director Michael Sarnoski, is headed to theaters in 2026, and Entertainment Weekly has a first look.

“What I love so much about Mike’s vision of Robin Hood is that the script delivered power, and it examines how power can be used for good or bad,” Jackman tells EW about taking on the role. And the striking image above proves that his Robin Hood looks unlike any we’ve seen before. “Robin Hood is a real man in our story. With all the scars, the pain, the regret, and yes, the love. Mike’s story has weight to it. For me, it’s beautiful and human.”

Writer-director Sarnoski, hot off A Quiet Place: Day One, and before that the indie breakout Pig, has spent the better part of a year in Northern Ireland working on the project. “You can be as familiar with earlier versions as you want,” says the filmmaker, now working in Los Angeles, explaining that “you’ll be carried along to understand what this version is, because the performances are so specific and so different from what you’ve seen before.”

Though Sarnoski is hesitant to share too much about the plot — even raising an “oh, does he?” eyebrow at the accepted wisdom that Robin Hood “steals from the rich and gives to the poor” — the title suggests that the legendary character is at the end of his life, and reflecting on his past. “He was this murderous outlaw who did a lot of terrible things, and was kind of monstrous. But he’s lived long enough to see this folklore get created about him. He’s figuring out how he feels about that, about being portrayed as a hero when he knows what he really was.”

Moreover, he’s doing it looking like an absolute wildman, as evident by these first-look photos taken on the “beautiful, barren mountains” where it was “rainy and snowy and freezing cold.”

When asked how much of that hair and beard is Hugh versus movie magic, Sarnoski dodges a little, but confirms, “You will be seeing some [of Hugh’s] musclebound physique.” He stresses it isn’t an action movie, per se, but “it’s probably more intense than you’re expecting.”

He continues, saying, “It almost gets towards feeling like a war movie. Fighting back in those days was brutal; it wasn’t people dancing around and fencing. It was people in the mud trying to crack each other’s heads open with a shovel.”

Joining Jackman (and seen scowling with him in the wind in the photo above) is Bill Skarsgård as “a version of Little John.” Sarnoski explains that Robin Hood “had a little army of child soldiers” he recruited, and that he served as a mentor to Skarsgård’s character. The two have now crossed paths years later, “with very different understandings of the lives they lived.”

Also in the mix is Jodie Comer, playing a character Sarnoski really wanted to keep a mystery, though he confirms she is not Maid Marian. She “introduce[s Robin] to another side of life. And the dance between those two brings the sensitivity to this movie.”

Her striking blue outfit contrasts with the harsh grays of the other two images. “We shot a lot of Jody’s [scenes] on the north coast of Northern Ireland, which is this really beautiful, gorgeous, expansive area — a different feeling as we get into her world.”

The Death of Robin Hood is Sarnoski’s first time shooting a feature on 35mm film, which he says upped everyone’s game. “There’s a charge that it gives you — we’re burning film right now, this is the real deal. There’s something about being in real epic, scopey locations, shooting on film that feels like you’re capturing something.”

This is a longtime passion project for the Wisconsin-born director, who confirms he has been a “Robin Hood head” since he was a boy. Unlike, say, Frankenstein, which has a definitive source text in Mary Shelley’s novel, Robin Hood’s origins emerge from myth and folklore. Sarnoski says the figure’s murky origin “plays a role in this story.”

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That said, this movie isn’t all revisionism. “There are five early ballads of Robin Hood that were first written [as the story] was passed down as oral tradition. And they’re really brutal. He is portrayed as a hero of the common man, but they’re still somewhat horrifying, in the way that old folk tales are.”

He concludes, “There’s an old quote about Robin that sort of says he’s this murderous bandit who the common folk have decided to glorify, and I wanted to examine someone who was going through that in their lifetime, and trying to grapple with the role of storytelling and their actual identity.”

The Death of Robin Hood will debut in theaters in 2026.

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