Following the box-office disappointment of The Dog Stars, Ridley Scott is looking to rebound with an adaptation of Treasure Island, the seminal pirate novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. Hugh Jackman is set to star as the villainous Blackbeard, with a script written by Adolescence co-creator Jack Thorne. Yet before Scott and Jackman set sail to adapt the literary classic, MGM+ will stream a reimagining of the series in October.
Deadline has revealed the first photos for Treasure Island, which will premiere on MGM+ on Oct. 11 in the United States and on Paramount+ in the UK and Ireland the following day. The reimagining follows Jim Hawkins (Tom Sweet) and his mother, Bess (Hayley Atwell), as they come into possession of an old treasure map and search for the treasure’s location. This brings them into conflict with both the British Navy and a band of pirates. See the images below:
In addition to Sweet and Atwell, Treasure Island will star David Oyelowo (Selma) as Long John Silver. Jack Huston (Boardwalk Empire) will play Aaron Graham, while Tomer Capone (The Boys) will play Billy Bones. Tristan Sturrock (Poldark) is set to play Captain Smollett. Craige Els and Neil Pendleton will star as Mr. Arrow and Mr. Cameron, respectively.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Oyelowo said he leaped at the chance to play Long John Silver. Yet he also didn’t want to ignore how the characters’ race would impact the story, saying:
“Out of the gate was this wonderful acknowledgment of the fact that one in three pirates at the time were Black. They were formerly enslaved people or they were from the Caribbean. And the way for them to find their way out of the oppressive nature of that time for Black people was to adopt piracy…We had to build some more meat on this particular bone in order to understand who Long John Silver was, because you can’t have me playing him at that time with no acknowledgment of what was happening racially, culturally, politically, historically. And so that made it incredibly interesting as a proposition.”
Oyelowo also revealed that the character Long John Silver was written as Black before he signed on:
“You almost never see that on screen. We even have Pirates of the Caribbean, but not many people from the Caribbean are in those stories or those renditions of a pirate narrative. So the fact that Long John Silver was already integrated from that perspective was very interesting to me, and suggested to me that this was going to be a different way in than Robert Louis Stevenson himself had applied the story.
Treasure Island is set to run for eight episodes, airing new entries weekly. This puts the season finale on Nov. 29 in the United States and Nov. 30 in the UK and Ireland. Huff hopes the series strikes the right balance between historical accuracy and action-adventure. “We still have the parrot, we still have all of the excitement and fun of the pirate genre. It’s grounded in a sense of realism, but if it were music, we’re just bending the note a little bit. It’s a slight bend of the note. It’s not a full over-the-top version, but it’s not a totally grounded, down-the-middle version, either. It’s got a bit of jazz in it.”
