Corsair
Download Corsair (.pdf)
Category: Historical Swashbuckler
Log Line: Two brothers, medical students from Oxford, are forced into piracy, but when one of them is killed, the other searches for vengeance, even if it means taking on the dreaded Henry Morgan and the largest armada of pirate ships ever assembled in the Caribbean.
Background:
It was my ancestor, Sir Henry Morgan, who drew me to this material.
This was my third script and by reading the previous two, you get an idea of where I was heading with this one. It combines the historical warfare and huge ship battles from “Grant” with the magic and mysticism of “Hoodoo Man.”
Many thought that I tried to do too much with this script. They were right. The first draft, which is what I’m putting up on this site, is about 143 pages long. That’s about 30 pages too many. I cut it down to around 120 when I was marketing it through ICM, but no longer have it on disc. So, a couple of unnecessary small scenes are still here and some of the dialogue is a bit fatter than in the final version.
Nonetheless, I’m quite proud of the story and think it is one of my most entertaining.
Side Notes:
This script won the Kathy McWorter Screenplay Award at California State University, Northridge, in 1998. McWorter penned “The War” starring Kevin Costner. “Corsair” was shopped around by ICM in summer of 1998, but pirate films have done poorly at the box office in recent years and the brother seeking revenge plot happened to be similar to “The Mask of Zorro” which premiered at about the same time. So, although I did get some good coverage, unfortunately, there was no sale.
I pictured Brad Pitt as the lead, and Toby McGuire as the younger brother who gets killed. For Morgan, I pictured Alec Baldwin, with sinister long hair and a mustache.