I’m a firm believer that Rob Cohen’s part three of the Mummy series is the best of the lot of them, and while I know that’s an unpopular opinion I’m slightly mystified as to why. Of course, when it comes to the bird’s eye view, too long spent comparing work by Stephen Sommers and Rob Cohen in a medium that also gave us, oh, say, Terry Gilliam, Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock and Werner Herzog is a bit like taking a day trip to the Seaside but staying in the carpark.  In the car.  With a bucket on your head.

According to Production Weekly (which as ever we can’t link to, as it comes subscription only) Rob Cohen is now attached to direct a film about modern day pirates.  The Sea Artist has been scripted by Tony Puryear, a comic book artist and sometime music video director who, over ten years ago, clocked up some raves for an unproduced Buck Rogers screenplay.

While I’m waiting to get a hold of The Sea Artist script myself, I’ve quickly asked around and found that it too is getting a thumbs up from the few who’ve managed to lay hands on it. Modern day piracy is a thrilling milieu, not least because it seems to be making the news with increasing frequency, but also because it carries all of the connotations of ‘pirates’ (ie., ne’er do well criminals who still retain a sort of glamour) with all the connotations of ‘modern day’ (ie., guns and grenades and speedboats and stuff blowing up).  I tried to find a sufficiently large picture with at least some of that vibe for the head of this post… you be the judge of how well I did.

Let me be the first to guess, without any foundation whatsoever, that Vin Diesel will take a part in this one.  Call it a hunch, but I’d put a tenner on it if Ladbrokes were open.