HOT-tempered Russell Crowe and director Ridley Scott are said to be squabbling like a couple of gladiators on the British set of their latest collaboration, Universal’s big-budget Robin Hood flick.
“The producers had to fly to London because Russell and Ridley won’t talk to each other,” an insider told Page Six. “Every time they stop filming, it costs the production millions of dollars.”
It would be the latest glitch for the $175 million movie, which was originally titled “Nottingham” but is now just “Untitled Robin Hood Project.”
Last December, we revealed how Crowe no longer wanted to work with Scott, whom he blamed for their disastrous fourth collaboration, “Body of Lies.” Then, in January, we reported how the Oscar-winning hothead ordered producers to get a new director and demanded script rewrites that devoted more of the plot to him.
The delays caused Sienna Miller to drop out, and Crowe had to go on a crash diet to drop 35 pounds because, as one producer noted, “We can’t have Robin Hood looking more like Friar Tuck.”
Crowe’s publicist, Alan Nierob, denied that there’s any friction between star and director, insisting, “It’s a good scene down there. Everything is on schedule.”
Universal chairman Marc Shmuger told us: “Ridley and Russell asked us to visit . . . to see more than an hour of footage they’ve already shot, which was nothing short of spectacular . . . We couldn’t be more excited by what we saw. Russell and Ridley are working on their fifth film together and have one of the strongest and most collaborative working relationships. When it’s news that a studio chairman and a film’s producer [Brian Grazer] visit a production, it must be a very slow gossip day.”
Crowe recently told Live News the title of the picture, which co-stars fellow Oscar winner Cate Blanchett, may be changed to “Robin Hood” in order to market it more easily next May.