Really, thought it was the other way around. Director made and never wanted to make more than a movie about the 14th Century Peasant's revolt and the Robin Hood-marketing was briefly attached by the US distributor (against the will of both the Director and the UK publisher and long after filming was complete) because it was tracking poorly?
As the historian Michael Postan describes, the revolt became famous "as a landmark in social development and [as] a typical instance of working-class revolt against oppression", and was widely used in 19th and 20th century
socialist literature.
[309] William Morris built on Chaucer in his novel
A Dream of John Ball, published in 1888, creating a narrator who was openly sympathetic to the peasant cause, albeit a 19th-century persona taken back to the 14th century by a dream.
[310] The story ends with a prophecy that socialist ideals will one day be successful.
[311] In turn, this representation of the revolt influenced Morris's
utopian socialist News from Nowhere.
[312] Florence Converse used the revolt in her novel
Long Will in 1903.
[309] Later 20th century socialists continued to draw parallels between the revolt and contemporary political struggles, including during the arguments over the introduction of the
Community Charge in the United Kingdom during the 1980s.
I bet they did want to make a movie about the 14th century peasants revolt. The director has made a bunch of other oppression-themed English movies, but he's also made a bunch of other good stuff. Part time socialist propagandist I guess.
