“The legend was a lie,” teases the trailer that gives a first look at characters played by Jodie Comer, Bill Skarsgård, and Murray Bartlett.

Hugh Jackman goes full Wolverine in bloody first trailer for The Death of Robin Hood

"The legend was a lie," teases the trailer that gives a first look at characters played by Jodie Comer, Bill Skarsgård, and Murray Bartlett.

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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January 6, 2026 9:03 a.m. ET

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Hugh Jackman in 'The Death of Robin Hood'. Credit:

Aidan Monaghan/A24

Never mind all that "steal from the rich and give to the poor" business. Hugh Jackman has come to set the Robin Hood myth straight.

The Aussie actor goes full Wolverine in the first trailer for *The Death of Robin Hood*, the new film from *Pig* and *A Quiet Place: Day One *director Michael Sarnoski. Jackman smashes, stabs, shoots jagged arrows, and impales a man through the chest in this dark adaptation of the centuries-old English ballad commonly known as "Robin Hood's Death."

"People speak of Robin Hood, tell his stories. They're all lies," a voice intones at the outset of the gritty trailer. "He was not a hero. You were a murderous brigand," says another. Jackman himself agrees, coldly announcing, "I am monstrous. I am the outlaw Robin Hood."

*Death of Robin Hood *features an all-star supporting cast, including Noah Jupe, Murray Bartlett, Bill Skarsgård, and Jodie Comer, who promises to "help those who come to this island."

Sarnoski confirmed to * *in a December preview of the film that Comer is not playing the fabled Maid Marian, the primary heroine of the Robin Hood mythos. Instead, Comer's mysterious character introduces Robin "to another side of life. And the dance between those two brings the sensitivity to this movie."

Jodie Comer in 'The Death of Robin Hood'.

Aidan Monaghan/A24

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That sensitivity goes a long way in the trailer that is otherwise dominated by bloodshed and brutality.

Even a little girl connected in some way to Comer's character, who seems to offer Jackman's Robin Hood a chance at redemption, has a dark past.

"What happened to her?" Jackman's antihero asks Comer's character, who answers, "Terrible things."

In case it wasn't clear, this Robin Hood isn't the wily, upstart thief of the people as he's generally depicted; the trailer declares, "The legend was a lie." Jackman also grumbles, "I've killed so many, I could not give you a count. It's a curse."

Hugh Jackman and Bill Skarsgård in 'The Death of Robin Hood'.

Aidan Monaghan/A24

Harvard's "Chaucer's World," an online database accumulating materials related to the storied English scribe Geoffrey Chaucer and his epoch, out of which sprang many fragments of the Robin Hood myth, notes that "Robin Hood's Death" is preserved in the Percy Folio Manuscript, which contains ballads dating from the 12th through the 17th centuries.

In the ballad, the hero is betrayed by his cousin, who bleeds him too severely while administering a blood-letting cure. He's also stabbed by his nemesis, Red Roger, and asks for his companion, Little John, to give him last rites before he dies.

Sarnoski noted that he infused this story with a rueful pathos, calling his Robin Hood a "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."**

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