Foul winds and black squalls be blowin’ in: Soon, a familiar rum-besotted face could be returning for the sixth Pirates Of The Caribbean movie, regardless of whether anyone asked for it or not.
The return of franchise star Johnny Depp was teased during this weekend’s D23 by Pirates executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer, per Deadline. The outlet goes on to note, citing unnamed sources, that if Depp returns as Captain Jack Sparrow, he won’t replace the franchise’s newest face, Margot Robbie, whose commitment to fronting a female-led Pirates film has been floating around nebulously like so much galleon detritus since 2020. Instead, Depp’s presence as a side character would, as Deadline puts it, be an “evolution of the franchise.”
“We’re talking with [Johnny],” Bruckheimer said. “[We’re] working on a screenplay, and hopefully we can get this done.” Whether this casting revelation is part of the reportedly “weird” Pirates pitch from The Last Of Us’s Craig Mazin, who’s still presumably attached to direct the next film like so many auteur barnacles, wasn’t broached.
This insistence on things people don’t want became a recurring theme during Bruckheimer’s interview on the D23 red carpet. Talk of Depp’s potential return to the Disney fold was soon followed by Paramount’s looming merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, which reached a new nadir last week when CEO David Ellison threatened to remove all Paramount operations from California as soon as October if the pending antitrust suit stalling the merger isn’t made to walk the plank, if you’ll allow the idiom.
“Look, I think the train has left the station,” the producer said concerning the merger, ignoring the obvious and more thematically appropriate nautical expression. “I think this is well on its way. You can sign all the petitions you want, but [the merger is] already being approved by European countries. It’s happening. So there’s not much we can do about it other than take David at his word that he’s going to make 30 movies [a year], and that would be fantastic.”
Maybe if this “accused abuser Johnny Depp meets the star of Barbie” Pirates movie doesn’t pan out, Depp can team up with Ellison on a Paramount-produced suite of films for the newly minted “master of misfits.” Or not! That’s always an option, too.
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