Jerry Bruckheimer decides it’s easier just to reboot Pirates Of The Caribbean
The super producer is tired of waiting on actors, so he's setting sail for reboot island
Aux News Pirates of the Caribbean
Photo: Alexi Rosenfeld
Considering Pirates Of The Caribbean has plundered a staggering $4.5 billion worldwide—even though if you ask anyone on Earth if they’ve heard of a movie called Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, they would say no— it’s been hard to get another ashore. Part of that, of course, is the high levels of radiation emanating from Johnny Depp. But also the diminishing returns from the series upon the release of its first sequel. In the time since Gore Verbinski took his hands off the ship’s wheel, Pirates has never been able to produce anything more than vapor that’s garnered hundreds of millions of dollars. Seriously, can anyone say they’ve seen Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Ties (that was the one with Penélope Cruz and grossed a cool billion).
After several false starts, which include threats to bring Depp back—if he can take time away from photoshopping himself into pictures of Robert Downey Jr.—and a lady-led Pirates spin-off with Margot Robbie, producer Jerry Bruckheimer says they’re going to reboot the series. Speaking to ComicBook.com while promoting the Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Bruckheimer said it’s simply “easier” this way. The news came seemingly out of nowhere as Bruckheimer mused on why Top Gun was such a success (“You have an actor who is iconic and brilliant”) before making a beeline for “We’re gonna reboot Pirates, so that is easier to put together because you don’t have to wait for certain actors.”
Which actors he’s talking about is up for debate. We all assume he’s talking about Depp, considering Captain Jack Sparrow is the only constant in the series and is something of the mascot for the whole thing. Depp would likely jump at the chance to do the movie instead of acting like a pariah in France. Kiera Knightly says she’s out. Also, and we can’t stress this enough, Orlando Bloom’s phone is on, lest anyone forget he would also like to return to the high seas. But apparently, that’s off the table, too.
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Lightning doesn’t strike twice.
On Stranger Ties is a movie about pirate apparel, while the one you’re thinking of is On Stranger Tides (Disney bought the rights from Tim Powers and neglected to use the contents of the book, which may account for the forgettable nature of the film.)
Which is a shame, because it’s a great book.
The book is highly influential. The guy who made the Monkey Island games has said, Stranger Tides was the biggest inspiration. Shame it was adapted into a fairly lame film.
Tim Powers got paid handsomely for it and now someone else can in theory get the rights to it and actually make a film (or miniseries) out of it and no one will be upset that it’s the same story as a PotC movie.
I’m pretty sure that Powers’ book (which he described, when it was published in 1987, like this: “Ever been to Disneyland? Ever been on the Pirates ride? It’s like that.” ) was what Disney wanted to do first, what they set out to do, but then just decided that since they had the ride, they didn’t need Powers’ permission.Note – I’m not saying that Powers stole anything from Disney. In fact (here’s my theory, possibly not provable) I think the part in the first movie, with that marionette scene on the ship (been a while, sorry) was taken by Disney, from Powers’ book (you’ll know the part if you’ve read the book and you should read the book anyway). So, theory time, I think Powers probably contacted Disney and said, hey, you should have paid me….. and in response they did buy the rights to On Stranger Tides, and made the muddled movie they did, probably with promise from him not to sue them. I hope they paid Powers a truckload of money because if any s-f writer deserves it, he sure does.
I want a Declare movie. That’s the one where Tim Powers explains the whole Kim Philby scandal not as Cold War politics but as a feud between bizarre supernatural forces. It works especially because Philby’s dad was an archeologist and young Kim used to go with with him on excavations, so who knows what unholy forces they released.
A Declare movie would be great, and I think relatively easy to adapt, at least into something like a 6- or 8-episode series. (Especially in his books around that time— from say, Last Call to Declare— there’s a lot going on all the place, plot-wise)The more recent trilogy (Alternate Routes, Forced Perspectives, Stolen Skies) could work too– they’re pretty good, though the covers are godawful.
Declare would be SUCH a great movie (or series I guess). I would also love to see Powers loose trilogy, which consists of Last Call and Expiration Date and Earthquake Weather, made into a three-season tv show. Failing that, Last Call would be perfect on its own. I can never watch Bugsy (or, come to think of it, the Godfather movies or Casino) without thinking of what is really happening in Vegas….
It has been long enough that I doubt most people would even remember it was the name of POTC 4. Its worth doing it the right way again.
Could we just get a Monkey Island Movie instead of rebooting this?
Now we are talking! I’d quite enjoy that.
You know what’s not getting rebooted? Sam Barsanti.The AV Club is when it gets sold to Paste, but.
What a weird decision to not wait for Margot Robbie — who is much busier than anyone else mentioned in this article and probably who Bruckheimer is grumping about — who’s one of the biggest stars in the world and who has shown she can help make projects everyone’s skeptical about into hits is a super-weird one.Who is he going to get to star in a new PotC movie who’s more of a box office draw than her?
They had her in the running for years to play the ride character Redd, who is blatantly based on Anne Bonny. Bet they regret passing on Robbie now post Barbie. Bigger shame, she’s great with physical comedy.
I mean theres always Gillian Jacobs ,Samara Weaving or Jaimie Pressley.
I demand someone make a film with all four just so we can get the Spiderman Pointing meme and other nonsense. I genuinely on a good day can barely tell Samara Weaving isn’t Margot Robbie. For years I kept thinking, it was weird that Margot Robbie was on Ash V Evil Dead.
Mmm, two out of three ain’t bad.
I’m not sure how blatant it is. Redd is just now a pirate running the auction of now non-human goods, rather than a woman being sold off by pirates, as previously.
Bonny is certainly the most famous female Caribbean pirate, but other than a gender and profession, I’m not sure how much they have in common. At the moment, Redd is a wafer-thin character, as all of the rides-only characters are.
Its more the red haired pirate woman is a stock cliché that comes from the myth Anne Bonny is Irish therefore a red head. That’s been a thing since 1888.Pirate depictions and that history are terribly derivative.
No, it’s really that they had a redheaded animatronic who was being sold into sexual slavery for the first few decades of a ride that’s nominally for kids.
They modestly changed her dress and dialogue but kept her recognizably the same redhead to change up their story. If she had started off as a blonde or a brunette or a green space alien, her appearance would have stayed the same.This was a Disneyland thing, not a pirate history thing. Nothing else about the ride is particularly historically accurate.
Actually, that’s not the original intent. Marc Davis the animator who created a lot of the POTC Ride did a lot of sketches prior to creating the ride. The original intent was to lean harder on the history, there are sketches explicitly of Anne Bonny and Mary Read doing pirate stuff and Blackbeard was meant to appear. This ultimately didn’t happen, but parts of that idea persisted. The first sketch he did of the Red Head character is her as a pirate with a sailors tattoo. This eventually morphed into the Red Head auction character which was around until I believe 2017 when it was changed to the pirate Redd character. You could say that Redd is a little closer to what Davis originally intended. Also the Anne Bonny sketch survives in the ride near the entrance on the wall and she has slight red hair. Trust me, I’ve written an entire paper on the identity history of Anne Bonny.
You guessed it…
Frank Stallone!
Ah, you’ll be missed, Gob, when Paste Magazine takes over.
Kind of like the scarecrow in that classic children’s story.
“Scare me?”
I guessed it!
Mark Wahlberg’s new hair?
dead blogs tell no tales. rip AVC and soon the comment section.
I mean, most of the rest of the world know “Dead Men Tell No Tales” as “Salazar’s Revenge,” so they probably would have been confused by that subtitle.
Nobody forget Salazar’s “JAK SPA RRRROW!”. Beside, most screen time focus on Geoffrey Rush rather than Depp. So, some people will like it. Stranger Tide is the forgettable one (something something fontaine of youth?). Even Ian McShane was forgettable on that one.
most screen time focus on Geoffrey Rush rather than DeppThat’s actually the first thing I’ve read about the movie that’s piqued my interest. Not that I hated Depp’s performance as Jack Sparrow, but I always thought Rush’s Barbossa was even more entertaining.
I have seen both the post trilogy Pirates films. Neither of them are great.But the entire first trilogy is loads of fun, I will fight anyone on that.
“Dead Men Tell No Tales” Not original ones anyways; just reboots everything.
The better question, what exactly happened with Sorceres Apprentice?
It was so good they realized they didn’t need to make any more.
Here’s my pitch: the plot twist at the end of the movie is that the pirates are all animatronics.
The AV Club is getting rebooted.https://www.thedailybeast.com/go-media-continues-fire-sale-dumps-av-club-and-takeoutSam Barsanti has been fired, most of the staff is still here, and Paste may at least try to revive their acquisition (as they’ve been doing with Jezebel). Enjoy your last weeks with your old Kinja overlords.
How do you know Barsanti got fired?
It’s in the article.
Oh yeah apparently he is fired, ha!
They also killed comments on Kotaku
I thought he was un-killable.
How long until they delete the comments section on here, like they did Kotaku? Just in case, let me get one last Spanfeller is an Herb in.This site has been circling the drain ever since they laid off half of the staff who didn’t want to move to LA, but if the comments section goes, I’m truly out. This was the only part of the site that was worth having, and if it gets purged, along with millions of comments from TV shows past, it’d be a great shame.
While reading that article, I was chuckling to myself about how lucky Barsanti would be to have survived three major employee layoff events. But I guess Paste already has a writer who posts often and indiscriminately, and doesn’t need another one.
I can’t tell if this is good or bad because I don’t really follow Paste, but I know they at least still review niche stuff like AVC used to (or even just basic stuff like music and books). Might be a good thing.
I will be very, VERY glad to see Kinja die.Love this site, and was enough of a fan of Gawker/Splinter to stick around, but Kinja was the single worst fucking idea that Nick Denton had aside from hiring A.J. Daulerio.
New actors mean they can’t demand premium prices for their participation in the flick. Bruckheimer will save buku bucks.
Characters that need to stay consistent across what are, potentially, just anthology series (see, Bond, Holmes, many superheroes) are easily recast. Timothy Chalomet has already done a Wonka. Let’s have him do Sparrow too, for a few flicks, and then one of the Stranger Things kids gets a few.