Screen Junkies » Port Royal

FX’s Pirate Show Producer Promises High Seas Action And Whores

Fred Topel — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 00:00:18 +0000

Gale Anne Hurd, producer of The Walking Dead and the first two Terminator movies, is developing a pirate show for FX. Port Royal makes us think about a hardcore TVMA version of Pirates of the Caribbean. Hurd indeed promised some ship faring action, and even some sexy wenches.

“We’ll be going out on ships but mostly we’ll be based where they interacted with the townspeople, with politicians, with the women of ill repute,” Hurd said at the Saturn Awards, where she accepted The Walking Dead’s award for Best TV Presentation from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror.

It’s FX, the network of The Shield, nip/tuck and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. They picked the baddest pirate port of legend. “This is Port Royal in the late 1600s, early 1700s when it was known as the richest and wickedest city on earth,” Hurd described.

So no funny drunken Disneyfied pirates. “They are not necessarily family friendly but we’re creating a whole world because Port Royal was a port that they all ultimately traveled through.”

Scott Rosenbaum is writing the pilot for Port Royal.

FX Tackling 18th-Century Jamaican Port Next

Penn Collins — Mon, 23 May 2011 23:44:20 +0000

FX decided it wants to roll out one more awesome show, so it has partnered with Fox International to crank out “Port Royal,” an hourlong documentary that focuses on the comings and going of the various shady characters that are affiliated with the 17th-century Jamaican port. Pretty high concept. It could be higher though. Perhaps there could be schoolteachers who practice voodoo as well.

Of course, the team behind the show are touting it as “provocative and dangerous,” so we can expect lots of side-al nudity and gratuitous use of the word “bullshit.”

While the concept isn’t doing a lot for me (a modern-day port, a la “The Wire” sounds a lot more interesting), “The Walking Dead‘s” executive producer Gale Anne Hurd is behind this project, so expect some high production values out of the show, though hopefully not at the expense of decent dialogue.

No word on a timeline here, but the project sounds a little ambitious for a fall premiere. We’ve waited 300 years for the tale of Port Royal. What’s a few more months? (Deadline)

Pirates Are Coming To TV

Joseph Gibson — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 16:36:01 +0000

Before Pirates of the Caribbean, it was a rule of thumb in Hollywood that anything related to pirates was box office poison. This rule extended to TV too, apparently, because when was the last time you saw a pirate-themed TV show that wasn’t the puffy shirt episode of “Seinfeld”?

Well, the “no pirates” rule is made to be broken, this time by producers Graham King and Gale Anne Hurd. It’s based on an idea by Hurd, and will be called “Port Royal.” Here be a plot synopsis, matey:

“Set in the late 17th century on the island of Jamaica, the series will chronicle the namesake port’s notorious rise as the ‘richest and wickedest city’ in the new world, and as a self-governing safe haven for cutthroat pirates, corrupt politicians and ruthless merchants.”

Sounds pretty piratey. Hurd might be a familiar name to you, since in addition to producing”The Walking Dead“ for AMC, she was the producer on such classics as The Terminator, Aliens, and Raising Cain. So if anyone can make people want to watch Depp-less pirates, it’s her. (via Deadline)