In an ironic twist, it seems that somebody has been taking the spirit of BBC1’s lavish new spin on the Robin Hood legend, due this October, a little too literally. A band of not so merry men has nicked some tapes from the offices of Tiger Aspect productions in Hungary, where the series has been filming on location for the last few months.
Nobody really knows the true nature of what was nicked - whether advanced edits of the forthcoming episodes, rushes, rough cuts - and neither has much credence been put into whisperings of the thieves demanding a £1 million ransom. But I’m finding it hard to believe that the stolen tapes would be the only copy of the material (or maybe that’s wishful thinking), but still, no publicity is bad publicity, and that’s what’s furrowing my brow…
Not so long back, when the thought of a successful reboot of Doctor Who sounded like blind stupidity, an employee of the canadian broadcaster, CBC, allegedly leaked the very first episode of the new series all over the Internet several weeks before its premiere. The BBC were quick to remove this aberration, but not before thousands of tech-savvy fans had downloaded the episode and passed comment, not to mention the column inches the story garnered in the press.
Am I being a mite bit suspicious that the Robin Hood theft bears a remarkable similarity to its stablemate’s previous pre-launch publicity garnering exercise? Well, you may think that, I couldn’t possibly comment…
I was thinking the same. It's all a bit too much of a coincidence. A show featuring outlaws living in a forrest is robbed by real life bad guys... Well, it did draw some attention to the series! The message boards are lighting up!