Guy Ritchie hired to plunder more public domain with Treasure Island

By Sean O'Neal | June 1, 2012 | 8:21pm

Aux Features Film

Seeking to capitalize on the public clamoring for more pirate projects that is ostensibly happening, Warner Bros. has hired Guy Ritchie to direct a new version of Treasure Island, a project it's been kicking around since the success of the Pirates Of The Caribbean sparked this arguable pirate "craze" that is surely not limited to just that franchise and unlikely to be replicated. Although it is absolutely unnecessary to say that the Sherlock Holmes director will craft a similarly "stylized" version of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic, consider it duly noted, along with all its implications of slow-motion, explosions, and great gusty headwinds of vaguely homoerotic banter.

At the very least, such touches will help distinguish it from the more than 50 past Treasure Island adaptations—including that very, very recent version with Eddie Izzard and Elijah Wood—as well as upcoming pirate projects like NBC's Crossbones and Michael Bay's Treasure Island "prequel" for Starz, while also maintaining a loose enough connection to the material that it can be so easily marketed on name recognition, they could just skip right now to the inevitably louder, dumber sequel and no one would feel like they missed much. Anyway, Guy Ritchie also made Swept Away with Madonna, so we've heard legends of a joke about "movies featuring bones and islands" buried somewhere in there.