Director Ridley Scott has been so prolific for so long, you’d assume he’s made every kind of movie there is, but that’s not the case. He’s even made multiple movies set on boats, but none of them had pirates in them. No, Ridley Scott has never made a pirate movie, but soon, he’ll do just that by adapting an all-time classic.
Deadline reports that the director of Gladiator, Alien, Blade Runner, and many more is set to direct a new adaptation of Treasure Island. Jack Thorne (Adolescence) wrote the screenplay based on the iconic Robert Louis Stevenson novel, and none other than Hugh Jackman will star as Long John Silver. Apparently, the package is going out to all the major movie studios this week to see who wants to make it.
One studio that won’t be making it, though, according to the trade, is Disney. Scott’s new film, The Dog Stars, is coming out via Disney’s 20th Century branch, and that team got a first look at the pitch. But, because Disney is still working on Pirates of the Caribbean, it didn’t want another major pirate movie competing in-house. It will, however, be competing from another studio, though, and with a script and star already attached, you have to assume things will come together quicker than that new Pirates movie.
Originally released in 1883, Treasure Island basically defined the language of what we know as a pirate story. So many of the tropes and characters we see in movies (and theme park rides) across generations gained notoriety from this story and its various adaptations. The novel is about a young man named Jim Hawkins who teams up with a group of men to find a secret treasure, only for one of those men—Long John Silver—to commit mutiny and attempt to steal the treasure for himself.
So we get Jackman as a devilish villain and Scott bringing all his Gladiator spectacle to the pirate genre. Sign us the hell up.
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