Yesterday, it was announced by WarnerMedia that they’ve added two more actors to their cast of “Our Flag Means Death,” a pirate comedy series at HBO Max that will be led by New Zealand comedian Rhys Darby and Taika Waititi as history’s most notorious pirate, Blackbeard.
They’ll be joined by Fred Armisen (“Saturday Night Live,” “Portlandia“) and Samba Schutte (“Sunnyside“)
“Our Flag Means Death” is loosely based on the true adventures of Stede Bonnet (Darby), a pampered aristocrat who abandoned his life of privilege to become a pirate. The rest of the impressive cast consists of Ewen Bremner, David Fane, Nat Faxon, Nathan Foad, Joel Fry, Leslie Jones, Samson Kayo, Guz Khan, Rory Kinnear, Matt Maher, Kristian Nairn, Con O’Neill, and Vico Ortiz.
It is executive produced by Taika Waititi, series creator and showrunner David Jenkins, Garrett Basch, and Dan Halsted.
Shooting on the water is well-known to be an expensive venture in both film and television, so it’ll be interesting to see how they’ll manage a budget needed for that for a comedy show. This is likely why we don’t see many pirate projects outside of Disney’s pricey “Pirates of The Caribbean” movies and the “Black Sails” series.
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The HBO Max series is part of a huge list of current and upcoming projects for Waititi, who recently appeared in the Ryan Reynolds‘ action-comedy “Free Guy” (a sequel on the horizon), has wrapped on directorial efforts such as “Next Goal Wins” and “Thor: Love & Thunder,” he’s also developing “Star Wars” and “Flash Gordon” films for Disney that he’ll direct. A live-action film based on the iconic manga “Akira“ is still potentially on his plate as well.