The wildly successful “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise may have brought pirate lore back into the mainstream, but it was hardly a story rooted in historical fact. So that said, are the kids who came for Johnny Depp and fantastical creatures really interested in true-life debauchery on the high seas?
Producer Barry Josephson ("Men In Black," "Enchanted") is banking on exactly that, hoping his upcoming “Blackbeard” does for pirate pictures what “Gladiator” did for sword and sandal epics: namely, bring it out of caricature and parody and back into being a serious genre. It certainly won't hurt having David Franzoni, the screenwriter behind "Gladiator" and "Amistad," penning his script as well.
“Blackbeard’s an incredible character," Josephson told MTV News. "A former naval captain who rejected the English and became a privateer, and who then becomes a pirate because he doesn’t want to be lorded over by anyone.” Read more...