Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Andrew Sanford | News | August 26, 2026
Marketing is hard! And by that, I mean movie studios are often beholden to shareholders, algorithms, and the whims of someone who fancies themselves an artist but is really a number-cruncher and has the final say. So, you’ll see bizarre decisions, like putting out movie trailers for films that are musicals without ever putting a song in them. You could also find yourself in a situation where your movie is generating a little buzz, but it would be better if you slapped some IP on the end.
About a month ago, a trailer was released for The Uprising, starring Andrew Garfield and directed by Paul Greengrass. The logline, as reported by Variety at the time, said the following: “Andrew Garfield stars as the legendary leader of a ferocious rebellion against the tyranny of King Richard II. As war burns across England, he forms an army of the people to face the King’s might in a fight for justice and survival.” Sounds pretty cool1 And the trailer is pretty intense.
If you look at most descriptions of the trailer in the various rips available on YouTube, you’ll see wording similar to the logline above. But if you go to the Focus Features version, you see something different: “Andrew Garfield stars as the leader of a ferocious rebellion against the tyranny of King Richard II. Set against the true events of the Uprising that helped inspire the legend of Robin Hood, he forms an army of the people to face the King’s might in a fight for justice.”
Given that Focus’s version was released at the same time as the others, it looks like they went back about two weeks before the movie was released and added that it’s actually a Robin Hood movie. According to THR, the company has also added a subtitle to the film, in case it wasn’t clear. The movie is now clunkily titled The Uprising: The Rise of Robin Hood.
Why change the name this late in the game? The most likely guess is that they wanted to give it a boost because it wasn’t tracking well. However, instead of adding new potential viewers, they’ve likely just alienated folks who were looking for a historical action film and instead saddled us with yet another gritty Robin Hood movie in the year of our lord 2026.
