Hey folks, Variety is reporting that Ridley Scott is directing a CAPTAIN KIDD film for Disney, alongside the uber-producer... Jerry Bruckheimer... whom he is currently making BLACK HAWK DOWN with. This will be Ridley's next foray into period epic action, after his wonderful GLADIATOR which came out this year (and on DVD today) The writing pair behind DOUBLE JEOPARDY (blech!) and THE ROCK (yippee, though I hear some of you going blech). Now I can only hope they'll do a great job writing this baby, as Captain Kidd is one helluva story to work with. Now there has been only one notable actor that has played Captain Kidd in the past... Charles Laughton... and in both of the films where he played the character... they were radically different from history... and once even involved Abbott and Costello. Personally I really like the old 1945 version... but it is far far faaaaaar from a great film, merely a very entertaining one.... with a great score! Seems like excellent material for Ridley to be working with... below is some historical information that I've culled together for you real quick to give you a refresher on the life of Captain Kidd....
"William Kidd, by-name CAPTAIN KIDD (b. c. 1645, Greenock, Renfrew, Scot.--d. May 23, 1701, London), was a 17th-century British privateer and semi-legendary pirate who became celebrated in English literature as one of the most colourful outlaws of all time. Fortune seekers have hunted his buried treasure in vain through succeeding centuries.
Kidd's early career is obscure. It is believed he went to sea as a youth. After 1689 he was sailing as a legitimate privateer for Great Britain against the French in the West Indies and off the coast of North America. In 1690 he was an established sea captain and shipowner in New York City, where he owned property; at various times he was dispatched by both New York and Massachusetts to rid the coast of enemy privateers. In London in 1695, he received a royal commission to apprehend pirates who molested the ships of the East India Company in the Red Sea and in the Indian Ocean.
Kidd sailed from Deptford on his ship, the "Adventure Galley", on Feb. 27, 1696, called at Plymouth, and arrived at New York City on July 4 to take on more men. Avoiding the normal pirate haunts, he arrived by February 1697 at the Comoro Islands off East Africa. It was apparently some time after his arrival there that Kidd, still without having taken a prize ship, decided to turn to piracy. In August 1697 he made an unsuccessful attack on ships sailing with Mocha coffee from Yemen but later took several small ships. His refusal two months later to attack a Dutch ship nearly brought his crew to mutiny, and in an angry exchange Kidd mortally wounded his gunner, William Moore.
Kidd took his most valuable prize, the Armenian ship "Quedagh Merchant", in January 1698 and scuttled his own unseaworthy "Adventure Galley". When he reached Anguilla, in the West Indies (April 1699), he learned that he had been denounced as a pirate. He left the Quedagh Merchant at the island of Hispaniola (where the ship was possibly scuttled; in any case, it disappeared with its questionable booty) and sailed in a newly purchased ship, the "Antonio", to New York City, where ..."
To find out how Captain Kidd turned out, Click here to finish the report, see images of Captain Kidd and read an indepth accounting of Captain Kidd's last adventure!
