‘Captain Blood’ in space? Think ‘Treasure Planet’ or (gulp) ‘Ice Pirates’

It’s no joke, even though producer Bill Gerber admits that when he first heard filmmakers Michael and Peter Spierig (‘Undead’) tout the project he thought he’d been transported to the scene in ‘The Player’ where Buck Henry pitches an equally outlandish sequel to ‘The Graduate.’ The studio has hired screenwriter John Brownlow to work with the Spierig brothers on an updated story, where the pirates will presumably look more like Starfleet troopers than bearded ruffians. When I called Gerber, he was matter-of-fact about the changes. ‘When it comes to swashbuckling, you just couldn’t go back to the pirate era, not once you’ve experienced the juggernaut that is ‘Pirates of the Caribbean,’ ‘’ he explains. ‘So we needed to find a new way to tell the story.’ For Gerber, the best option was not a present-day story involving the Somali pirates -- who are probably too vile and desperate to base an entertainment around -- but a story set a couple of hundred years in the future. ‘It’s still the classic ‘Captain Blood’ storyline: Peter Blood has been wronged by the powers-that-be and he wants to get even. But the best way to recreate that is by putting it in space, where you can have a totalitarian style of government that’s actually pretty similar to what England was like in the 17th century...’