Long before superheroes took the box-office throne, before The Matrix or Star Wars or even Jaws spurred on waves of imitators, the adventure film was one of Hollywood’s most lucrative genres, and the pirate movie was one of its most popular offshoots. Swashbuckling adventures on the high seas were the stuff of cinematic legend as far back as Douglas Fairbanks’ The Black Pirate in 1926, and surged in demand in the 1940s and ‘50s with countless Errol Flynn films. Even now, decades after the genre’s heyday, it occasionally returns to remind us of its place in cinema history. There’s a reason we still get Peter Pan films, every millennial remembers Treasure Planet, and the original Pirates of the Caribbean series is still one of the highest-grossing trilogies ever.
Pirates have been a regular fixation of video games as well. From the earliest point-and-click pirate adventures to the remake of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag arriving next month, games have been a fantastic way for players to envision themselves as dashing explorers or diabolical brigands, and one of the most recent properties to embrace that was Sea of Thieves. An open-world multiplayer adventure built on exploration and alliances or conflict with other players, Sea of Thieves had to fight an uphill battle against controversy and criticism upon launch to become one of Microsoft’s most original gaming releases — and to celebrate that fact, the immersive pirate experience is unexpectedly coming to the big screen.
