One Piece returned for the second season of its live-action adaptation on Netflix, and fans can get a lot more swashbuckling entertainment. This is a genre that has enjoyed highs and lows over the years, but over the last few decades, there have not been that many options, and the biggest was based on a theme park ride from Disney.
With very few exceptions, pirate movies are rarely successful at the box office, which is why there are not as many to choose from. It also typically costs a lot to make a pure movie, so this caused many to actually cost studios financial losses, despite the movie’s quality. However, there are several pirate movies worth checking out for fans of One Piece.
The Pirates Of Penzance (1983)
Many people might roll their eyes at any suggestion that they should watch The Pirates of Penzance thanks to its terrible reputation. The pirate musical was a box office bomb and didn’t even make $1 million worldwide, one of the worst bombs in Hollywood history. This was surprising since it was based on a popular musical.
The movie even had the lead cast of the original Broadway play return for the movie, except for Ruth’s role, which saw Angela Lansbury replace Estelle Parsons. Kevin Kline stars as Frederic, a pirate apprentice who wants to quit but finds himself pulled back in, where his alliances switch throughout the story.
While a box office bomb with a poor reputation, The Pirates of Penzance has an 81% fresh Rotten Tomatoes score. It is a fun movie with some great musical numbers, and it is well worth watching for any pirate movie fan.
Hook (1991)
Steven Spielberg tried his hand at a pirate movie, and he had a great cast, but it ended up as the second critical flop of his career after 1941. However, while 1941 remains one of Spielberg’s worst movie releases, Hook has become a cult classic, especially for kids who saw it when it came out.
Robin Williams stars as Peter Pan, the former leader of the Lost Boys in Neverland, who has lived in society and has become an unhappy adult. However, when Hook (Dustin Hoffman) returns and abducts Pan’s children, he has to find the evil pirate and save them. Julia Roberts also stars as Tinker Bell.
The movie was a box office success, although it didn’t meet the studio’s idea of the success they expected. Regardless, fans look back fondly on this movie, and it remains a cult classic and one of Spielberg’s most underrated movies.
The Bluff (2026)
The Bluff is a rare modern-day pirate movie, and it just debuted in 2026 on Prime Video. The movie is a lot more of a bubblegum action movie than a prestigious pirate release, but it still delivers some of the action that fans of the genre expect.
Bollywood legend Priyanka Chopra Jonas stars as Mariam, a former pirate who now lives on a small island with her son. However, a pirate with a grudge, named Captain Connor (Karl Urban), is looking for missing gold and targets Mariam, believing she has it and seeking revenge.
Critics gave The Bluff positive reviews, with critics praising the movie for its sense of nostalgia for people who missed out on pirate movies. While the action is not as big here as in other pirate movies, it delivers some great battle scenes, and the cast was up to the task.
Treasure Island (1990)
While this was a made-for-TV movie in 1990, its cast takes it a step above many other similar movies made at the time. Based on the Robert Lewis Stevenson novel, this was one of 15 English-language film adaptations of Treasure Island. Despite being made for TV, this was one of the most faithful adaptations of Treasure Island.
What makes this great is the incredible cast. Charlton Heston plays the pirate Long John Silver, while a 16-year-old Christian Bale plays young Jim Hawkins. The rest of the cast included names like Oliver Reed, Christopher Lee, Julian Glover, and Pete Postlethwaite.
The original movie was released on TNT, and it is so respectful that it uses dialogue straight out of the Robert Lewis Stevenson story. The movie even has ties to the past, as the ship used here was the same one that was in Mutiny on the Bounty.
Treasure Planet (2002)
For younger audiences and Disney Animation fans, there is another version of the Treasure Island story. In 2002, Disney released its animated film, Treasure Planet. The story was the same, but it took the pirate adventure into space instead of to the high seas, and it ended up as entertaining as expected.
Instead of the pirate ship crashing on the island where Jim Hawkins lived, it was a spaceship that crashed on Jim’s planet of Montressor. Joseph Gordon-Levitt voiced Jim Hawkins, while names like Emma Thompson, Martin Short, and Laurie Metcalf joined him. In this version, Captain Hook was a cyborg alien.
Treasure Planet was a box office failure, thanks in large part to competing with the second Harry Potter movie, a James Bond movie (Die Another Day), and The Santa Clause 2. However, it received an Oscar nomination and is better than its box office makes it seem.
Cutthroat Island (1995)
Cutthroat Island is the biggest box office flop in the history of pirate movies. With a $98 million budget, the movie made $16 million worldwide and remains one of the most notorious productions in Hollywood history. The film was made while the production company Carolco Pictures was in the middle of bankruptcy.
Geena Davis was the primary star, playing Morgan Adams, a woman who hunts down another pirate named Dawg Brown (Frank Langella), who kidnapped her father, Black Harry. After she finds her father, he tells her, before he dies, the location of a treasure. She sets out to find it, alongside a con man named William Shaw (Matthew Modine).
Not only was Cutthroat Island a box office flop, but it also received negative reviews, with a 40% Rotten Tomatoes score. However, while it has a terrible reputation, it is still a fun pirate movie that delivers what fans of the genre want, although it led to the decline of pirate movies over the next decade.
Muppet Treasure Island (1996)
While Cutthroat Island caused Hollywood to rethink pirate movies for a decade, there was one movie that came out a year later that showed how to do it the right way. However, this was yet another Treasure Island adaptation, although this time it was made using The Muppets.
Four years after The Muppets made a movie based on A Christmas Carol, the Jim Henson creations were back again with another adaptation, this time of the Robert Lewis Stevenson pirate novel. Muppet Treasure Island was not as good as The Muppet Christmas Carol, but it was still an enjoyable outing.
Tim Curry played a perfect Long John Silver, while a young Kevin Bishop played Jim Hawkins. Add in the always fun Muppet characters, and this is a pirate movie great for all ages.
Captain Blood (1935)
Pirate movies are not a commodity in today’s Hollywood, and they haven’t been for decades now. However, at one time, they were massively popular, alongside Westerns, gangster movies, and Biblical epics. The man most synonymous with pirates in Hollywood’s Golden Age is Errol Flynn.
Michael Curtiz, the man who directed Casablanca, discovered Errol Flynn and made the young actor a household name, and his best pirate movie was Captain Blood in 1935. Flynn plays Blood, a doctor imprisoned simply for conducting his medical duties, only to escape and become a pirate with his fellow escaped prisoners.
This was the movie that made Flynn a star. It earned a Best Picture nomination and was a massive box office success. This was also the pirate movie that was shown on television in The Goonies.
The Pirates: Band Of Misfits (2012)
In 2012, the stop-motion animation studio known for Wallace & Gromit made a stop-motion animated pirate movie that remains criminally underrated. Known in the U.K. as The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! and renamed in the United States to The Pirates: Band of Misfits, this was one of the best pirate movies of this century.
The story takes place in 1837, when London’s Royal Navy has defeated several countries on the high seas, but now faces a threat from pirates. Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton) demands that all pirates be disposed of. When The Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant) enters the Pirate of the Year competition, it leads to a battle for survival.
The movie was a box office success and has a very high 87% Rotten Tomatoes score. It also earned an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature and almost got a sequel, which was canceled thanks to financial issues.
Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl (2003)
The most popular pirate movie ever made was part of the most successful pirate franchise of all time. The wild thing is that this was after so many other pirate movies failed at the box office, and this one was simply based on a theme park ride and not even the classical pirate movies of the Golden Age.
Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl stars Johnny Depp as the disgraced pirate Jack Sparrow, who teams with a blacksmith named Will Turner to rescue the kidnapped Elizabeth Swan. However, they also have to contend with the Royal Navy, which wants all pirates dead, and the Black Pearl crew, who are affected by a curse.
This was the biggest pirate movie success story of all time, with a $654.3 million take. It also spawned a franchise that has made over $4.5 billion worldwide.