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"There was gold on the page," insists David Nicksay, president of Morgan Creek Productions, a four-year-old independent with a reputation for successful midsize movies like Young Guns and Major League. Morgan Creek chairman James G. Robinson was so enthusiastic that within 24 hours of receiving the script, the company bought the property for $1.2 million on Feb. 14, 1990. "We didn't look back from that point--we just kept going," says Robinson, clearly proud that his small company is taking on the big studios in the blockbuster game.

With both Twentieth Century Fox and Tri-Star Pictures threatening to launch Robin Hoods of their own, Morgan Creek dispatched Watson to England to start lining up a crew and scouting locations even before a director and star had been signed. The rival films eventually fell by the wayside-the Fox version became a TV movie; the Tri-Star effort ground to a halt-but in 1990, there seemed no time to spare.

Sept. 3 was decreed the last possible start date to beat the competition to the screen and finish shooting before the English winter set in. By the time he was hired, Reynolds had only 10 weeks for pre-production. Costner, who was held up putting the finishing touches on Dances With Wolves, arrived just three days before filming was to begin. Rehearsals were out of the question: Costner, Morgan Freeman (who plays Robin s Moorish partner, Azeem), and Christian Slater (as Will Scarlett) had a single read-through of the script. Two other key roles, Maid Marian and the Sheriff of Nottingham, weren't even filled. Alan Rickman soon signed on as the villainous sheriff. But Robin Wright, cast as Marian, had thrown the production a last-minute curve when she announced she was pregnant (with Sean Penn's child). The frantic search for a replacement turned up Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (Class Action), who was already in London working on a BBC-TV production of Uncle Vanya. "I was here, I had a phone call, and then there was a script in my hands," Mastrantonio says with a laugh.

Meanwhile, Reynolds and Costner were at odds over how much of an accent the quintessentially American actor should attempt. Costner was determined to sound English. Reynolds, fearful that would prove distracting to audiences, urged him to drop it. The issue was never resolved: Costner's English accent surfaces in some scenes and vanishes in others. Costner was also concerned that Reynolds' script revisions hadn't devoted enough attention to Robin, embellishing the sheriffs role instead. Reynolds admits that, contrary to Densham's original formulation, "what I did not want to do was Indiana Jones. That has been done already." He felt Densham's sheriff was too one-dimensional, a medieval Darth Vader, and worked for weeks to inject some wit into the role.

Alan Rickman, best known to American audiences as the icy terrorist in Die Hard, couldn't have been happier about the sheriff's growth. "At first, I thought, 'Robin Hood-again?'" he confessed during a break from filming. "But this script is changing--my lines are, anyway." He tore into the part with a gusto that bordered on glee, storming through Nottingham Castle, barking such commands as "No more merciful beheadings! And call off Christmas!" While Rickman was playing it to the hilt, Costner stuck to his far more subdued, naturalistic style, a juxtaposition that risked making the flamboyant villain more appealing than the well-intentioned hero. "Rickman's acting Costner off the screen," one crew member muttered after a particularly extravagant turn. Rickman disputes that. "It's not a competition," he says. "Kevin's responsibility is very different. If I were playing Robin Hood, my responsibility would be to be as romantic and heroic as possible. It's important that there is a lighter tone to what I am doing."

Reynolds approaches the topic of Costner's performance delicately, but he does suggest it may have lacked vigor. "Kevin was pretty tired, and understandably so, after Dances With Wolves," he says. "But he did the best he could do. He threw himself completely into the character, even though there was no time for him to assimilate the part."

AS MOVIEGOERS poured out of a Robin Hood test screening in Sacramento in April, they left the filmmakers with a real problem. Although the movie scored a resounding approval rating of 92 percent, the producers weren't at all merry. When people were asked their favorite character, they picked not Costner's Robin but Rickman's Sheriff. While Costner had been robbing from the rich, Rickman had been stealing the movie. After his success with Dances With Wolves, Costner was Robtn Hood's drawing card, and the producers didn't want him upstaged. They demanded that more Costner be put back in.

Reynolds strenuously protested. Having already enhanced Costner's role in an earlier round of changes, he felt he'd altered the film enough. "The test results speak for themselves," he says. But since he was scheduled to fly back to London to supervise the final dialogue dubbing, the producers took matters into their own hands. Actually locking Reynolds' film editor, Peter Boyle, out of the cutting room, they sent in their own team to trim some scenes and beef up others. When Reynolds was shown the results upon his return to Los Angeles, he came to a tough decision. "I didn't feel like it was an improvement at all," he explains. "I thought in a number of places it was pretty awkward and embarrassing." He was particularly disappointed to lose a subplot in which the sheriff learns that the witch Mortianna is his mother, and with it the sheriff's curtain line: "Who was Dad?" So he walked way from his film, abandoning the final editing, scoring, and mixing. Costner, deep into his role in JFK, kept at arm's length from the dispute. Reynolds is convinced his friend could have effectively intervened on his behalf if he had chosen to. Costner suggests that bruised feelings go with the territory. "We solved the problems," he says, "but we didn't solve them in a way that either Kevin or I found mutually satisfying. But you just hang in there. You tough it out. You fight it out and work it out." Do he and Reynolds remain friends, then? Costner replies quickly, but tersely, "Yes." Reynolds pauses before giving his answer to that question. "We haven't really talked," he says. "I think it's been a pretty painful process for both of us."

With Robin Hood poised to become one of the summer's top hits, most of those involved in it will probably forget the production's myriad problems when the box office figures roll in. But for the two friends who made the picture possible, the wounds of making Robin Hood may take longer to heal.