With no fewer than two reboots of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean in the works, what’s the future for the franchise’s icon, Captain Jack Sparrow? Johnny Depp starred as the iconic captain in all 5 of the franchise installments; however, reports that Disney has two Pirates of the Caribbean reboot films in the works suggests that the franchise is continuing on without Depp's involvement, leaving fans to wonder what happened to the lovable rogue Jack Sparrow.
When producer Jerry Bruckheimer threw his immense clout behind a big-screen adaptation of the historic Disneyland attraction The Pirates of the Caribbean, Disney’s boardroom thought it was a terrible idea. Then-CEO Michael Eisner even tried to get the film shut down, deeming it a flop-in-waiting and questioning the veracity of adaptations of theme park rides following the commercial disaster of The Country Bears. It wasn’t until Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski convinced him that the movie would be a good way for Disney to compete with lavish franchises like The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings that he eventually relented. Eisner, however, still had major reservations about the story, the budget, and the Keith Richards-esque performance of Johnny Depp, who he declared was ruining the movie.
2003's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl eventually became the fourth highest-grossing movie of that year, with just under $655 million to its name. That movie launched a five-film franchise that is currently the 14th highest-grossing film franchise of all time, ahead of Mission: Impossible and Despicable Me. To this day, the Pirates movies are some of the most successful live-action titles Disney has ever released that weren't acquisitions or remakes. So, it's no wonder that they're so keen to reboot the franchise, not once but twice.
Johnny Depp is the undisputed star of the Pirates franchise, to the point where the filmmakers began to wholly mold the stories around the actor’s interpretation of Jack Sparrow, something that was never in the screenplay. The flipside of this decision, which did launch a successful series of movies, is that it limited the original scope of the story and the possibility to expand beyond Sparrow’s narrative.
The movies also became wildly expensive to produce. The fourth film, On Stranger Tides, is officially the most expensive film ever produced, with an eye-watering reported cost of $379 million to its name. Depp’s salary alone was reported to have been $55 million, one of the highest ever given to one actor for a single movie. The fifth movie, Dead Men Tell No Tales, was reported to have a budget of $320 million at one point, which was eventually corrected to $230 million by Disney, but did little to quash gossip surrounding the film’s on-set problems and perpetual lateness of their star. While the movie did make $794.7 million worldwide, it ended up being the second lowest-grossing film in the franchise, in large part thanks to decreased interest from domestic audiences. Critics also grew tired of the overblown stories and increasingly parodic nature of Depp’s performance. Even in an age of blockbuster film-making that has become too big to fail, the Pirates franchise began to seem less worthwhile as an investment for Disney, especially when they had the Marvel Cinematic Universe and a plethora of live-action remakes in their corner to make up the grosses.
If Disney wished to continue using Depp in the new Pirates movies, it would be reasonable (not to forget a whole lot more cost-effective) to include Sparrow in smaller cameos that support the new stars. Sparrow works best as the agent of chaos who's secretly two steps ahead of everyone else, and the later films sink when they try to make him the dominant protagonist. The new Pirates movies give Disney a chance to breathe new life into a franchise that has a killer central hook. The more the films expand this world, the better the benefits will be creatively and financially. The Pirates of the Caribbean ride has made plenty of changes throughout the decades, so it makes a lot of sense for the movies to do so as well.