Toronto filmmaker and music-video helmer Director X first took aim at a modern-day adaptation of heroic archer and outlaw Robin Hood 10 years ago.

That’s when he thought of the idea of updating the English folklore tale, about a crusader who teams with a merry band of outlaws to steal from the rich to give to the poor, he tells Playback Daily.

Years of development and a major network greenlight later, the director and executive producer previously known as Julien Christian Lutz is seeing his vision come to life in the Global original scripted series Robyn Hood, which debuts this fall.

Director X (pictured) says he first mentioned the idea for the Boat Rocker-produced scripted series to his friend Luti Fagbenle (Maxxx) of London- and Los Angeles-based Luti Media, which led to the building out of a team that included Jill Green (Magpie Murders) of London’s Eleventh Hour Films.

The decision to flip the protagonist to a young woman instead of a man was made in the development process, during which a sizzle reel was presented in July 2019 to Kathleen Meek, manager, original content, scripted and factual, at Corus Entertainment.

“They said, ‘We like this idea, go get your team together,'” Director X recalls. “So I went and got Boat Rocker and put together who was going to write, and then went back to Corus and said ‘All right, let’s do it. You get a room, let’s put this together.'”

The 8 x 60-minute series is written by Chris Roberts (Orphan Black) and executive produced by him along with Green, Fagbenle, Director X for Creative Rain, and Kerry Appleyard (Orphan Black), SVP, head of scripted Canada for Boat Rocker Studios. Director X also helmed several episodes.

Boat Rocker handles global distribution for the series and was the right fit to produce because of its work on Canadian series Orphan Black, which had the same tone as Robyn Hood with its darker elements and female lead, says Director X.

As Appleyard told a panel at the Banff World Media Festival (BANFF) earlier this month, the series was entirely financed out of Canada. Funding sources included the Canada Media Fund, Ontario regional tax credits, and Corus, which gave them a licence fee. Global distribution, sales and licensing team Boat Rocker Rights provided a distribution advance to fill the gap.

Meek said it was “a massive priority for us to get this made. It’s never easy to get a show greenlit, because it’s such a big investment, but everything about it — the team, the authenticity — felt like such a fresh way into the Robin Hood legend.”

The writers’ room for the series was initially in-person but then had to switch to virtual when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, says Director X.

Production kicked off last summer in a Toronto studio, with exteriors shot in Hamilton, Ont. The cast includes Jessye Romeo, Nykeem Provo, Idrissa Sanogo, Ksenia Daniela Kharlamova, Jonathan Langdon, Sydney Kuhne, Ian Matthews, Kira Guloien, Manuel Rodriguez-Saenz, and Lisa Michelle Cornelius.

Appleyard said Boat Rocker was committed to diversity and inclusion in front of and behind the camera, and achieved gender parity on the directing team.

Romeo plays the lead, a young rapper who hails from a working-class neighbourhood and leads a hip-hop group that fights back against injustices caused by a local property developer and the sheriff.

Director X says the show wasn’t written with any race in mind. Instead, they simply cast who felt right for the role.

“It’s an all-Black show but it’s not about being Black,” he says. “We have a social commentary built in — it’s rich versus poor … we have gay characters and Black characters and all this stuff. But it’s not what Robyn Hood is about. They just exist in this world, like we all exist in the normal world… It’s essentially a superhero show.”

Such is the fluid creative process of the Grammy-nominated director, who’s created music videos for major artists including Canada’s Drake as well as features including Across the Line and Superfly, and series including Viceland’s Mister Tachyon.

“No good art comes out of being rigid,” says Director X, who also co-founded Toronto- and L.A.-based prodco Fela with Taj Critchlow.

Fela has many projects on the go as it moves into other forms of content beyond commercials and music videos, he adds.

Among those projects is Video Star, which is in collaboration with Boat Rocker-owned Insight Productions. The 20 x 30-minute documentary series will look at the artistry behind seminal music videos from the 1970s-onward, harkening back to Director X’s roots.

“As someone who came from that medium that truly respects it as an art form, where the world does really treat it like it’s this disposable thing, I wanted to document and speak to those creators before the time has passed,” he says.

Fela’s roster of directors includes Toronto-raised Karena Evans, who has helmed music videos for artists including Drake, Coldplay, and SZA, as well as some episodes of HBO Max’s Gossip Girl reboot.

Director X says the company has been free of “those prejudices that a lot of people in power have.”

“It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, we need a woman director.’ It’s like ‘Oh, this is great work.’ The work came first,” he says.

“Without those weird little subconscious or sometimes conscious blocks, where people get disregarded because they’re a woman, because they’re Black, because they’re a Black woman — all these different reasons that these doors are harder for you to get through, we didn’t have those. So when the world turned around and said ‘We need more diverse directors,’ there was Fela with a bunch of great directors that so happen to be diverse. We just want a shot. Everyone just wants a fair shot.”

Photo by Kristian Bogner Photography