The pirate craze has long since been replaced by vampire lust and, unless the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean somehow re-ignites it (unlikely), the following news feels like too little too late. Empire says a modern redo of Treasure Island is setting sail.
It’s a story that’s been done a dozen times before on film. My favorite version is still the 1950 Disney version in which Robert Newton plays a rascally and almost sympathetic Long John Silver staging a mutiny and developing a fatherly a affection for cabin boy Jim Hawkins while sailing the seven seas in search of buried loot. It’s a fantastic pirate flick, but the Robert Louis Stevenson story on which it’s based is timeless, and one that’s worth retelling. Unless of course you have an idea this horrible for retelling it.
See word is that the people at Ecosse Films plan to remake it into something “hipper”. They want Treasure Island to be cool and sexier. They’ve seen that wisecracking new, Kung Fu using Sherlock Holmes and I guess they now think the classics are no longer sacrosanct. They’re going to Poochie up this story. How they’ll do it remains to be seen, but try as I might, I just can’t get the horrifying vision of a rapping Long John Silver out of my head. Besides, didn’t Disney already try this idea? It was called Treasure Planet and if it failed once I guess it can fail again.
