Guy Ritche has signed on to adapt yet another classic piece of literature. According to Deadline, the filmmaker will be working with Sherlock Holmes producer Lionel Wigram, who has been looking to add a contemporary feel to the famed children’s novel Treasure Island. So it seems to make sense that Ritchie and Wigram reunite for something like this.

Not much is known about the actual film itself. Alex Harakis was the last screenwriter attached to the script. Ritchie himself has other things on his plate as well. He subbed in for Steven Soderbergh when he left The Man From U.N.C.L.E., so it could be a while before we see this get into production.

In February we found out that producer Lionel Wigram was behind a new take on the tale of the Three Musketeers would be coming to theaters using the same methods used to successfully reinvent Sherlock Holmes with Guy Ritchie, Robert Downey Jr., and Jude Law.

Now comes word that Wigram isn’t stopping there — the producer is now developing a re-imagining of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson novel Treasure Island for Warner Brothers. The story has seen a ton of film adaptations over the years, including in 1950 with Robert Newton and Bobby Driscoll, and in 1990 with Charlton Heston and Christian Bale.

By ScarletScribe

Silver: My Own Tale with a Goodly Amount of Murder
By Edward Chupack
Paperback
St. Martin’s Griffin
Release Date: January 6, 2009

Best known for striking a cutthroat figure in the classic Treasure Island, Long John Silver takes up the plume in Silver to recount with no regret how he became the lovable blaggard pirate fans have know him to be. And it’s not pretty. Silver has a way of making fast friends and killing them just as quickly, all while on a decades-old quest to find a mysterious treasure.

If you’re fearing a fanfic retread of classic waters, then you can rest easy. The pretense of the novel is a defeated post-Treasure Island Silver, who has been imprisoned on his own ship by an unnamed former hearty (shipmate). His only way of tormenting his captor — because what other scheme would the Long John Silver cook up? — is to write to him daily about the seafaring way of life and his life in particular.

Villainy doesn’t come easy, we see in this fictional autobiography. It takes a certain amount of moral bankruptcy, plenty of lies, and — if you’re doing it right — a significant body count. It’s the kind of career plan that necessitates an evil laugh or two, but Edward Chupack‘s Silver stays true to the psychopathic roots of its main character and narrator with a playful lyricism that’s all about piratry in the name of practicality. You’re hungry? Steal. Did that guy just insult you? Stab the bastard. For once, we have a main character who’s clear on what he wants and who he needs to kill to get it. There’s no moral compass in this book — and if there is one, it’s constantly pointing to kill.