HAVING BEEN ransacked by errant bankers and greedy property developers in recent years, there’s little treasure to be plundered from Ireland these days.
But Rupert Murdoch’s satellite broadcaster Sky is planning a raid on Dublin next month to begin filming part of an adaptation of Treasure Island, the Robert Louis Stevenson classic.
I’m told that British comedian Eddie Izzard has been lined up to play the mutinous one-legged pirate Long John Silver in a two-part, four-hour drama. The show will be broadcast on Sky 1 HD for Christmas 2012.
Filming is also planned for Puerto Rico (presumably that will be the bits with sunshine).
The drama will be produced by Dublin-based Parallel Films for MNG Films.
It’s the third Sky production to be filmed in Ireland in the past two years. The others were Martina Cole’s The Take and Neverland, which told the story of Peter Pan.
Sky, which has 635,000 subscribers in Ireland as measured by Nielsen’s latest market survey, is believed to have invested about €10 million here between the three productions.
Arrr....
