The CW is in the market for Robin Hood.
The youth-skewing network is developing Sherwood, an hourlong period drama with a female slant, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
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Sherwood, which has received a script commitment at the network, is set in 1072 England and revolves around a young noblewoman who sets out to free her serf boyfriend, who has been wrongfully imprisoned by ruthless Norman occupiers. Seeing help from the vanished Robin of Locksley, she inadvertently reunites -- and joins -- the fabled Robin Hood and his Merry Men, inspiring new hope for the oppressed people of Nottingham.
Tze Chun (Cashmere Mafia) will pen the script, which hails from CBS Television Studios. Oscar-winning American Beauty producer Dan Jinks, who produced the CW's short-lived Emily Owens, M.D., will executive produce.
The project comes at a time when the network has found success with freshman drama Arrow, a reboot of the DC Comics franchise about the superhero archer. Sherwood's Robin Hood, should the drama move forward,would become the network's second archer.
Sherwood becomes the latest high-profile hero to surface at the network this development cycle, joining Amazon, a Wonder Woman origin story from Grey's Anatomy's Allan Heinberg. CW also has a contemporary Alice in Wonderland drama from The Playboy Club's Chad Hodge set up this development season, as well as a Sleepy Hollow reboot.
The Chun effort joins NBC's Hood, marking the second Robin Hood story set up this year. The NBC effort, which also received a script commitment, hails from Ken Sanzel (Blue Bloods) and re-imagines Robin Hood as an Iraq War veteran-turned-outlaw in upstate New York.
Chun is repped by WME, Gramercy Park Entertainment and Morris Yorn; Jinks is repped by WME and Bloom Hergott.
The Robin Hood story has been a frequent subject of film and TV adaptations, most recently with Ridley Scott taking on the tale in 2010 with Russell Crowe as the archer/swordsman. Errol Flynn famously starred in 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood (pictured above), which many consider to be the benchmark in the franchise.
Email: Lesley.Goldberg@thr.com; Twitter: @Snoodit
