Circle the date, pirate people. The new Treasure Island series starring David Oyelowo has officially locked in a release date, and it's coming sooner than you'd think. Per Collider, the show premieres this October across MGM+ and Paramount+, which gives us one more reason to not touch the patio furniture until winter.

If you're wondering where you know Oyelowo from and you're a Sheridan-verse person, that's the connection. He led Lawmen: Bass Reeves for Paramount+, and he was genuinely great in it, one of those performances where you stop thinking about the actor and just start following the man. Now he's trading the frontier for the high seas, which feels like a natural jump for a guy who does "weary leader holding everything together" better than almost anyone working.

Details are still fairly thin beyond the date itself. It's an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, so expect Long John Silver, young Jim Hawkins, a map, a parrot, the whole canonical toolkit. The question with any new version is always tone. Do you go gritty and grounded, or lean into the old Errol Flynn swashbuckle of it all? Modern TV being what it is, I'd bet on the first one. Nobody greenlights a pirate show in 2026 to make it cozy.

The two-platform rollout is interesting too. MGM+ getting first crack with Paramount+ in the mix is the same playbook Paramount has been running with its bigger swings lately, and say what you want about streamers, they're clearly putting real weight behind this one. An October launch also slides it nicely into that prestige-fall corridor where everyone's queue starts bulging anyway.

I'm a sucker for a good adventure classic done with care. Treasure Island has been filmed a dozen ways, from the 1950 Disney version I wore out as a kid to the oddball Muppet take that has no business working as well as it does. The bar isn't complicated: give me salt air, moral rot, and a Silver who's charming enough that you hate yourself for rooting for him.

Oyelowo's presence is the main reason I'm in. Bass Reeves proved he can carry a slow-burn episodic season without the thing sagging, and this material needs exactly that kind of anchor. No trailer has hit yet, at least not as I write this, but October isn't far off, so I'd expect footage within weeks.

I'll have more when the trailer drops. Until then, maybe rewatch Muppet Treasure Island and call it research. That's what I'm doing.