Hugh Jackman to Play Long John Silver in Ridley Scott's 'Treasure Island'

Sony's latest round of release date announcements carried one piece of news that should resonate well beyond the studio's quarterly calendar: Ridley Scott is bringing Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island to the screen, with Hugh Jackman in the role of Long John Silver, and the film now has a firm theatrical target of November 11, 2027, according to Deadline.

A Classic Property in Capable Hands

Stevenson's 1883 serialized adventure has proven remarkably durable across adaptations — from the Victor Fleming silent era through the beloved 1950 Disney version with Robert Newton, whose barnstorming performance essentially codified the modern image of the peg-legged pirate. What Scott brings to the material, if his decades-long track record in sprawling, visually immersive cinema is any guide, is a filmmaker temperamentally suited to the moral ambiguity at the novel's core. Long John Silver is not simply a villain; he is one of literature's earliest antiheroes, a man whose charm and cunning make him as compelling as he is dangerous. That particular tension — charismatic menace concealing genuine complexity — is precisely the kind of challenge Jackman has shown himself capable of navigating throughout his career.

Why Jackman Is the Right Choice

Casting Jackman as Silver is a shrewd piece of thinking. The actor carries enormous audience goodwill and a physical presence that commands the screen, but he has spent recent years deliberately expanding into territory that complicates his more heroic image. His bold turn as an addiction angel in Human Resources demonstrated a willingness to inhabit morally fractured spaces, while his performance in The Sheep Detectives became a genuine streaming hit on Prime Video, confirming that his appeal translates fluidly across tonal registers. Long John Silver demands precisely that range — warmth and menace alternating within the same scene — and Jackman appears to be at a point in his career where such a role can be fully realized rather than simply rendered entertaining.

The November 2027 Window

Sony's choice of November 11, 2027 is deliberate. The pre-Thanksgiving corridor has historically been fertile ground for prestige tentpoles with awards aspirations — films that want both commercial reach and critical conversation. A Ridley Scott production carries the weight of that ambition almost automatically; his late-career output, from The Martian through Napoleon, consistently courts the wider conversation even when the films themselves remain contested. Placing Treasure Island in that window signals that Sony views this as something more than a branded IP exercise. It is worth noting, too, that 2027 is shaping up as a consequential year for Jackman more broadly — The Greatest Showman stage musical is also headed to West End's Drury Lane that same year, meaning the actor-producer's profile will be unusually high on multiple fronts simultaneously.

Context Within Scott's Later Career

For Scott, now in his late eighties, the project is another example of a filmmaker who shows no inclination to slow down or retreat toward smaller material. His interest in sweeping historical and literary canvases has only deepened with age. Treasure Island fits neatly alongside that impulse — a story with genuine mythic texture, a morally complex central figure, and the kind of visual scope that allows a director of his sensibility to operate at full power. Whether the film engages with the novel's darker undercurrents or leans into its adventure framework will likely define how it is received, but with this pairing of director and star, the project arrives with considerable credibility already built in.

With production details and further casting still to emerge, November 2027 feels both far away and suddenly concrete. For now, the date is set, and the voyage has officially begun.