143 Years Later, The Original Swashbuckler Is Getting A Slick Reboot
Alas, no Muppets this time.
The best kinds of stories are the timeless ones, the ones that can be told over and over again in any format and with any setting. They’re often stock stories like Romeo and Juliet or Cinderella, but that doesn’t make them any less impactful when they’re set in Regency-era England or among a community of garden gnomes.
One of these timeless stories has been adapted so many times that the most famous adaptations are often the ones that changed the most from the original tale. But now, the series is getting a straightforward adaptation with A-Listers in the cast.
Muppet Treasure Island is probably the best-known adaptation of the original book to Millennials.
According to Deadline, Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 pirate novel Treasure Island is getting a new series adaptation starring David Oyelowo, Hayley Atwell, and Jack Huston. The series is a co-production between MGM+ and Paramount+, with Paramount only getting rights in the UK and Ireland. That means American viewers will likely have to tune in to the (often very underrated) streamer MGM+ to catch this series once it comes out.
Treasure Island has been adapted for the screen for about as long as the movie camera has existed. From a silent film in 1918, Walt Disney’s first live-action movie in 1950, or the BBC TV adaptation in 1951, there are more adaptations across movies, TV, and even the stage than you can shake a wooden leg at.
Disney has made three different versions of Treasure Island in recent years, each with their own unique premise.
But in recent memory, the most notable adaptations have all had a pretty strong sci-fi or fantasy bent — and they were all released by Disney. In 1996, the Jim Henson Company followed up its success with A Muppet Christmas Carol with Muppet Treasure Island, starring Tim Curry as Long John Silver and current Gorillaz voice actor Kevin Bishop as young Jim Hawkins. In 2002, Disney released Treasure Planet, a sci-fi version of the story set in space using a combination of 2D and 3D animation. Finally, in 2024, Disney+ released Skeleton Crew, a Star Wars series starring Jude Law that cribbed heavily from Treasure Island’s story beats.
This straightforward adaptation can bring this story back to its roots and tell a pure tale of pirate action and buried treasure. Sure, Treasure Island may have been written with children in mind, but it’s an eternal coming-of-age story about a young boy setting out into the big, wide world to find his destiny. That’s a story that doesn’t need droids, space, or singing frogs to be entertaining; it’s already got the juice.
It’s been too long since a plainly-titled Treasure Island adaptation was available for American viewers — the latest was probably a movie adaptation in 1999 starring Jack Palance. This series will see if there’s still an audience for that story even without a gimmick.
