Andrew Garfield The Uprising, the Paul Greengrass historical drama about the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, has taken a sharp left turn in its marketing with weeks to go before release, with promotional material from some territories now billing it as a Robin Hood origin story.
A late pivot that has raised eyebrows
For most of its promotional life, The Uprising has been sold as a grounded historical epic rooted in the bloody revolt against Richard II, driven by wretched living conditions and punishing taxation. Garfield’s character was listed in the credits only as ‘Ploughman,’ unnamed, with no explicit connection to Sherwood Forest made in any official material.
Then, this week, the film’s publicity page on X posted a promo carrying the tagline ‘To the rich, he was an outlaw. To the people, he was a hero,’ alongside a new subtitle: The Rise of Robin Hood. A fresh plot synopsis followed, describing how Garfield’s character ‘forms an army of the people to face the King’s might in a fight for justice,’ set against ‘the true events of the uprising that helped inspire the legend of Robin Hood.’
That is a considerable gear-change for a film whose theatrical release is just a couple of weeks away. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the new synopsis was released in tandem with the social media post, reinforcing the Robin Hood connection that had, until now, been largely absent from the campaign.
It is worth noting that the project has a longer history than its current title suggests. Reports of Greengrass developing a Peasants’ Revolt film first emerged in May 2022, with Benedict Cumberbatch then set to star. The working title at that stage was The Hood, which, viewed in light of this week’s marketing pivot, does invite a certain amount of retrospective eyebrow-raising.
What the director and the distributor actually say
In an Empire interview published alongside the new promotional material, Greengrass references Robin Hood directly, though in careful terms. He points to the 1377 poem Piers Plowman as an influence, describing it as ‘the first moment the character of Robin Hood appears in print.’ Garfield’s character, the article notes, remains ‘an unnamed ploughman,’ one of the leading revolutionaries alongside Cosmo Jarvis’s Wat Tyler, the real-life frontman of the revolt.
The cast assembled around Garfield is substantial. The Independent reports that Jamie Bell plays John Ball, a radical preacher, in the film, a historically loaded role, given Ball’s reputation as one of the revolt’s most incendiary voices.
But the UK distributor, when pressed by Metro, was unequivocal. ‘The Uprising is a historical epic about the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, not Robin Hood,’ they said. ‘The UK marketing campaign does not make any references to Robin Hood. Marketing materials posted by other countries that may appear in the UK online and on social media referencing Robin Hood are not issued or approved by us.’
So the Robin Hood framing appears to be a regional marketing decision rather than a universal rebrand, at least according to the people distributing it in this country.
Andrew Garfield The Uprising heads for a September release
Whatever it ends up being called in each territory, the film has a fixed date in the diary. According to Wikipedia, The Uprising is scheduled for UK theatrical release on 11 September 2026, distributed here by Entertainment Film Distributors, with Focus Features handling the US release.
The timing of the marketing pivot (arriving with the release just around the corner) suggests whoever controls the overseas social accounts decided the Robin Hood angle was worth testing on audiences, regardless of whether it reflects what Greengrass actually made. The director’s own comments in Empire are suggestive but non-committal, leaning on Piers Plowman as a literary touchstone rather than making any direct claim that Garfield is playing the outlaw of legend.
Whether Garfield’s unnamed ploughman genuinely picks up a longbow or simply embodies the same eat-the-rich spirit that the Robin Hood myth has always carried, audiences in the UK will find out on 11 September 2026.
