Producer Jerry Bruckheimer continues to tease another Pirates project, with the latest update confirming that a reboot featuring a young, new cast is definitely happening.
It’s been the best part of four years since we first heard that Disney had plans to make two very different Pirates Of The Caribbean movies to continue the popular swashbuckling series that already boasts six films. The plans back in 2020 were to develop a female-led version which would be headlined by Margot Robbie alongside another film with an all-new cast. The latter version was based on a script penned by Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin and Ted Elliott, the writer behind the original Pirates films.
Then in 2022, reports surfaced to suggest that the Margot Robbie-led version had been abandoned with Robbie herself stating that Disney ‘didn’t want to do it.’ However, series producer Jerry Bruckheimer popped up not long afterwards to suggest that both instalments of the series were alive and still on the table at Disney.
If the wheels seem to be moving particularly slowly at Disney with these projects, we shouldn’t forget that the House of Mouse has weathered a couple of years where the world was dealing with a global pandemic, plus a year of strike-related disruption. The sands have just kept on shifting at Disney making it (we’d imagine) more difficult for the studio to make a definitive decision about what to do with one of its more valuable live action properties that doesn’t have a Marvel or Star Wars badge on the front.
Still, the future of the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise may finally be clearing up at Walt Disney Studios. As of last month, David Greenbaum came in to replace Sean Bailey as the head of the studio. We’d imagine that this means that any projects that have been in a state of limbo can finally grind into gear now. What that means for the Margot Robbie version, we don’t yet know but Jerry Bruckheimer has been speaking to The Hollywood Reporter to confirm once again that the next Pirates film that’s on the way will definitely feature an all-new cast.
While confirming that development on Top Gun 3 was on the way, Bruckheimer had this to say about the project: “You don’t know how they come together. You just don’t know,” the producer stated. “Because with Top Gun you have an actor who is iconic and brilliant. And how many movies he does before he does Top Gun, I can’t tell you. But we’re gonna reboot Pirates, so that is easier to put together because you don’t have to wait for certain actors.”
This seems to confirm that the next film will be the one described as ‘weird’ by Mazin, and although that’s all we have to go off right now, could an all-new cast and a ‘weird’ take mean the studio are looking to spend a little less and go in a slightly more creatively risky direction? That could certainly be interesting, right? We know that David Greenbaum has been promoted to lead the studio’s live action films out of the rut they’ve slowly sank into, and a bold, fresh take on the Pirates Of The Caribbean series would be a great statement of intent. We’ll let you know more when we hear it.
