It seems Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes has a lot to answer for, as now producers are looking around for any and all classic literary properties they can sex-up for a modern, hipper take on the story. On Friday it was announced a Holmes-style take on The Three Musketeers is in the offing and today it’s the turn of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.
Ecosse films is planning the new version, which Variety says will play up the relationship with the pirate Long John Silver and young Jim Hawkins (but then, what screen version of Treasure Island hasn’t concentrated on that – after all, you’re not gonna make it about the parrot, are you?). There aren’t any other details about the movie, other than that Silver will be turned from a cranky, rather unpleasant character into someone hipper, in the style of Robert Downey Jr.’s take on Holmes – although I’d be shocked if there wasn’t a liberal sprinking of Captain Jack Sparrow in there too. As yet, there’s no news on when the new version of the tale of pirates and buried treasure might start shooting.
As Treasure Island is a perennial favourite that’s had all sorts of screen adaptations over the years in various genres, it was inevitable someone was gonna try and make a Sherlock Holmes-style version soon, so it seems Ecosse is just getting in there first.
Interestingly, the same Variety report says that Ecosse are planning a stage version of Sam Taylor Wood’s recent film Nowhere Boy, which chronicles the teen years of John Lennon, although there no news on when it might be staged.