Pirates Of The Caribbean 6 surprisingly wasn't "too weird" for Disney, according to Craig Mazin

The The Last Of Us director is trying his hand at reviving the long-dead franchise

By Emma Keates  |  September 5, 2023 | 6:43pm
Aux News Craig Mazin
Pirates Of The Caribbean 6 surprisingly wasn't
Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales Screenshot: Walt Disney Studios/YouTube

Disney CEO and strike side-stepper Bob Iger knows people are really, really fed up with franchises and the infinite growth model. Haunted Mansion, the Mouse House’s latest park-attraction-to-big-screen adaptation, was a mere specter at the box office. Massive, record-smashing profits for Barbie and Oppenheimer proved that audiences are once again hungry for original storytelling and classic filmmaking. So, naturally, Disney is running with… Pirates Of The Caribbean 6, which we’re sure is exciting for someone out there! (If not Johnny Depp, whose participation in the gestating film is “noncommittal” at best.)

At least this film—the first Pirates entry since Dead Men Tell No Tales critically bombed over half a decade ago—is being helmed by one of the most exciting directors out there right now: Craig Mazin, the mind behind brilliant, pitch-dark dramas like The Last Of Us and Chernobyl, but also The Hangover Part II and a couple of Scary Movie installments somehow. Also, it’ll be weird—perhaps “too weird”—which, considering this resumé, makes a whole lot of sense.

Mazin, who co-wrote the script for the upcoming film with original Pirates franchise writer Ted Elliott, recently spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the project. “We pitched and thought there’s no way they’re buying it, it’s too weird,” Mazin said. “And they did! And then he wrote a fantastic script and the strike happened and everyone’s waiting around.”

(Side note for mushroom-zombie enjoyers: Mazin recently said something to the same effect about TLOU season 2, which has apparently been fully mapped out and is ready to go as soon as the strike concludes.)

Not much else is known about the film, other than the fact that it apparently focuses on a “younger cast” (per producer Jerry Bruckheimer) and that this project is moving forward over the other Pirates project that was in Disney’s hopper, starring Margot Robbie (although this one is apparently not totally dead in the water, at least as of last December). It’s going to be a pirate’s life for all of us in the near future, we guess.

 
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