Cinematical

I wondered how long it was going to take another studio to hoist the colors. Variety reports that DreamWorks has finally done it, and they're tackling the most famous pirate of all: Blackbeard.

The film will have an interesting team behind the scenes, too: David Franzoni, the writer behind Amistad and Gladiator, will pen the screenplay, and Barry Josephson is producing alongside former prexy/co-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers, Pat Croce. Croce has a real devotion to piracy -- he wrote Pirate Soul, a book chronicling the Golden Age of piracy, and owns a pirate museum in Key West, Florida. He's working with Franzoni on the screenplay.

Blackbeard's story is certainly open for Hollywood flights of historic fancy, so Franzoni is (for once) safe from my history professors. Other than his death, I don't think there is solid documentation of his exploits. (I'm told by our resident Jack Sparrow that not even the flag touted as his is real.) So the big question is: Will they totally romanticize Edward Teach, or make him as terrifying as he was reported to be? I vote the latter, because I would love two hours of a Captain Barbossa type. Plus the image of his headless body swimming around the Adventure freaked me out as a kid -- I doubt that would be in a movie, but one can hope.

I was hoping Pirates of the Caribbean would start a trend, and that swashbuckling wouldn't end just because Johnny Depp hung up his eyeliner. I want to see more real-life pirates tackled -- everyone from Grace O'Malley to Captain Kidd. Of course, this means my house will never be free of tricorns or cutlasses, but that's just the way it goes.