Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) will return in a fifth Pirates of the Caribbean film, which is subtitled Dead Men Tell No Tales according to its directors, Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg. Casting rumors aside - be they Christoph Waltz playing a new pirate or Orlando Bloom reprising his role as Will Turner from the first Pirates trilogy - today we can confirm where the production will be taking place, as well as when filming is expected to begin.

Not too far back, we reported that Walt Disney Pictures was actively seeking an incentive from the Australian government to film a "big budget feature" - heavily rumored to be Pirates of the Caribbean 5 - in the country. The Mouse House has previously been offered $21.6 million in funding from the country's leaders to shoot David Fincher's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea film remake there, but the project ended up being canceled - and now, that same amount of funding is being put towards Pirates 5 instead (though Disney was reported to have been in negotiations to increase the sum).

Pirates of the Caribbean 5 to film in Australia in early 2015?

Queensland Senator George Brandis confirmed the $21.6 million incentive for Pirates of the Caribbean 5 in an official statement, saying this is "Australia's largest ever contribution to the financing of a major film" and the production will be the "largest international feature film" ever shot in Australia. Similarly, Queensland Premier Campbell Newman announced that the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie is expected to bring in $100 million to Queensland and will provide "thousands of local jobs," to boot.

Principal photography on Pirates of the Caribbean 5, as we've been hearing in recent months, is now slated to begin in February 2015, with shooting take place both on location in Queensland and in the Village Roadshow Studios on the Gold Coast. However, the next Pirates installment won't be setting sail in theaters until Summer 2017, by which point Depp will have costarred in two other Disney projects - this December's musical Into the Woods and the sequel Alice in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass in 2016 - in addition to other non-Disney films (Mortdecai, etc.).

Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean 4

Whereas the original Pirates trilogy centered around the story of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swan (Keira Knightley), with Captain Sparrow serving as a catalyst for their journey, the last installment, On Stranger Tides, placed Jack front and center... and while the movie grossed over $1 billion worldwide, it also left many people grumbling that maybe both the Jack Sparrow character and this franchise in general, have overstayed their welcome by this point.

Rønning and Sandberg only have the Oscar-nominated Foreign-Language indie Kon-Tiki - a critically-acclaimed feature that also took place at sea - under their belt, but does that mean they're up to the task of breathing fresh creativity into this swashbuckling ride-turned blockbuster series? Well, we've still got nearly three years before we find out for certain...

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales opens in U.S. theaters on July 7th, 2017.

Source: Attorney-General for Australia Minister for the Arts