After making his television directorial debut for HBO's Game of Thrones episode, "Blackwater," Neil Marshall (The Descent) will now direct the pilot for Black Sails.  The eight-episode Starz series is a prequel to Treasure Island that follows the swashbuckling exploits of Captain Flint and his crew.  Michael Bay is also on board to executive produce the project, which was created by Jon Steinberg and Robert Levine.  If Marshall's prowess at handling "The Battle of the Blackwater" is any indication, we should be in for some high seas adventure in Black Sails.  Hit the jump for more.Deadline reports that Marshall will handle the Black Sails pilot.  The series is currently in pre-production in Cape Town, South Africa with plans to set sail in early 2014.  The show may inherit the soon-to-be-vacant Spartacus spot.  Here's a synopsis of Black Sails which takes place twenty years before the events of Treasure Island:

Flint, the most brilliant and most feared pirate captain of his day, takes on a fast-talking young addition to his crew who goes by the name John Silver.  Threatened with extinction on all sides, they fight for the survival of New Providence Island, the most notorious criminal haven of its day – a debauched paradise teeming with pirates, prostitutes, thieves and fortune seekers, a place defined by both its enlightened ideals and its stunning brutality.

As for Marshall, the director is currently in pre-production for the Dracula picture, The Last Voyage of the Demeter.  The script centers on the voyage of titular ship that ferried Dracula from Transylvania to London, and it looks like Viggo Mortensen will be playing the Demeter's Captain.

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