HAS Rusty officially gone batty?

Crowe, the co-owner of South Sydney Rabbitohs and a Twitter fan, said he captured what appears to be several flying objects whizzing over Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens earlier this week.

Hours after griping on Twitter that his new flick was being under-promoted, Russell Crowe seemed to create his own publicity stunt.

Posting a video on YouTube see video below) of what appeared to be flying objects whizzing over the gardens, Crowe wrote: "A friend and I set camera to capture fruit bats rising from Botanic Gardens. This was a big surprise."

The footage attached to the tweet was posted online late on Tuesday from a brand-new account by the name of ParallelUniverse1234.

Contacted yesterday Crowe's Aussie rep clarified the alleged UFO video, shot by acclaimed cinematographer Duane Manwiller, was actually filmed in Sydney four years ago.

"Duane is a friend of Russell's and shot that while he was in Sydney about four years ago," Crowe's manager Grant Vandenberg told Confidential.

Asked why Crowe chose to release it now, Vandenberg said: "I have no idea."

The decision to release the old footage came several hours after the actor made a handful of obvious digs at the studio behind his latest flick Broken City - distributed in Australia by Twentieth Century Fox - suggesting the release campaign behind the thriller had been unsubstantial. "So apparently @BrokenCityMov is released in Australia on Friday . . . who knew? Very subtle release campaign," Crowe wrote.

Vandenberg also slipped in a plug for the flick, released in the US six weeks ago to an underwhelming box office response, when we talked to him yesterday. "(Crowe's) got a movie out tomorrow. Are you mentioning that?" he asked.

Consider the truth officially out there.