David Slade Directing Pilot Episode of NBC Blackbeard Series ‘Crossbones’
The director of the vampire flicks Twilight: Eclipse and 30 Days of Night will helm the maiden episode of NBC’s new drama Crossbones, starring John Malkovich as the pirate Blackbeard.
The Wrap revealed this week that David Slade will direct the pilot episode of Crossbones, premiering this winter on NBC. Slade most recently directed the first episode of NBC’s Hannibal earlier this year.
The new show will air on Fridays at 10pm, starting midway through the upcoming 2013-2014 television season.
Two-time Academy Award nominee John Malkovich (Being John Malkovich, Shadow of the Vampire, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) will play the lead role of Blackbeard.
NBC has ordered 10 episodes of the new pirate adventure series from the award-winning creator of Luther, Neil Cross, and acclaimed film producers Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald (Gladiator, Men in Black, The Ring).
The series will explore “the true legend of the most notorious pirate to ever sail the earth.”
The Outer Banks’ most infamous transplant resident, the pirate Edward Teach, also known as “Blackbeard“, was ultimately killed off the coast of Ocracoke Island, North Carolina on November 22, 1718.
You can read the official synopsis for Crossbones below!
It’s 1715 on the Bahamian island of New Providence, the first functioning democracy in the Americas, where the diabolical pirate Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard, reigns over a rogue nation of thieves, outlaws and miscreant sailors. Part shantytown, part marauder’s paradise, this is a place like no other on earth – and a mounting threat to international commerce.
To gain control of this fearsome society, Tom Lowe, a highly skilled undercover assassin, is sent to the pirates’ haven to take down the brilliant and charismatic Blackbeard. But the closer Lowe gets, the more he finds that his quest is not so simple. Lowe can’t help but admire the political ideals of Blackbeard, whose thirst for knowledge knows no bounds – and no law. But Lowe is not the only danger to Blackbeard’s rule. He is a man with many villainous rivals and one great weakness – a passionately driven woman whom he cannot deny.
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