Yo ho ho and a barrel of explosions! Michael Bay is making a pirates TV series. In Cape Town!

He’s already blown up the present and the future real good, and now Michael Bay has set his sights on the past. The (pun intended) explosive director of such blockbusters as Transformers and Bad Boys, will be producing a series entitled Black Sails for the STARZ network, most famous for the highly gratuitous and over the top Spartacus series.

So right at home for Bay then.

The show will be detailing the adventures of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Captain Flint and John Silver (apparently before he got “Long”?) 20 years prior to Treasure Island as this official synopsis explains:

Flint, the most brilliant and most feared pirate captain of his day, takes on a fast-talking young addition to his crew who goes by the name John Silver. Threatened with extinction on all sides, they fight for the survival of New Providence Island, the most notorious criminal haven of its day – a debauched paradise teeming with pirates, prostitutes, thieves and fortune seekers, a place defined by both its enlightened ideals and its stunning brutality. 

STARZ will be starting production right here in my backyard at the Cape Town Studios (so I’m guessing there’ll be quite a few toothless pirates in the background) sometime later in the year, with an 8 episode initial run scheduled to start in 2014.

Chris Albrecht, STARZ Chief Executive Officer made the announcement of the series via press release and had this to say about working with the director

“Starz is excited to be working with a visionary like Michael. Along with the high-octane action that is a hallmark of a Michael Bay production, it has the elements that Starz originals are striving to bring to the premium landscape: epic, larger than life, cinematic storytelling. The series is also a property we believe will appeal to the global content marketplace with broadcasters around the world.”

The Master of Bayhem issued a statement of his own (I like to imagine that all the punctuation is actually an explosion. Makes it more authentic.)

“I’m excited to branch out into television, especially doing a long-form series for Starz, a network known for supporting cutting edge programming.”

The show was created by showrunner Jon Steinberg, who was also the creator of popular shows Jericho and Human Target. Bay will be serving as Executive Producer on the show, but with a name as big as his, I’m expecting to see his influence all over this one.

So don’t be surprised by impossibly beautiful wenches by the boatloads and a whole lot of canon fire. I’m just not sure how he’s going to get the military attack chopper slowly hovering in front of a sunset, but then again, reality has never been much of a deterrent for Bay before.

Last Updated: May 8, 2012