Johnny Depp and his association with the Pirates of the Caribbean are no more. Or, at least, in an official sense.
While fans will understandably revolt upon learning the latest news, Disney is solving one of its longest-standing problems by bidding farewell to the prolific 60-year-old actor who’s become synonymous with his character, Captain Jack Sparrow, and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
Jerry Bruckheimer recently sat down with ComicBook.com who asked him about two of his most iconic franchises: Top Gun and Pirates of Caribbean, among other things. In the interview, Bruckheimer revealed that rebooting Pirates of the Caribbean will make it “easier to put together”, rationalizing this decision by saying that it helps speed things along when “you don’t have to wait for certain actors.”
While a financial hit, 2017’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, was largely panned by critics, effectively forcing Disney to press pause on future installments in the franchise. Depp’s involvement in other projects, including The Wizarding World, further made it difficult to get things going on the sixth film as well. Depp would eventually get fired from both due to the controversies surrounding his messy divorce with Amber Heard and the subsequent trial.
Of course, just because the sixth Pirates of the Caribbean film is a reboot doesn’t mean Bruckheimer is getting rid of the fan-favorite character.
Back in December 2022, Bruckheimer confirmed that while Depp might no longer be a part of the franchise, it’s not like they can just easily kill his character off, saying “You can’t. We tried to kill him. It didn’t work.”
Nevertheless, this hasn’t stopped fans from petitioning for Johnny Depp to return as Captain Jack Sparrow in a future Pirates of the Caribbean film.
The next Pirates of the Caribbean film currently doesn’t have a director or an actor, for that matter, attached to it, but we do know that Margot Robbie is no longer involved.
The Last of Us’ co-showrunner, Craig Mazin, is one of the scriptwriters along with the original screenwriter, Ted Elliot. The award-winning scribe previously revealed that he’d worked on a “fantastic script” that Disney liked even if he felt like it was “too weird.”
Unfortunately, we’ve not had any news regarding its progress following the writers’ strike work stoppage that lasted through last September.
