The Next ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ Will Be a Reboot

The next time we see a Pirates of the Caribbean movie it will look significantly different — as the next film in the franchise will apparently be a reboot of the property.

That’s according to franchise producer Jerry Bruckheimer. In an interview with ComicBook.com, he was asked whether he thought a new Top Gun or a Pirates of the Caribbean movie would make it to the screen next. He didn’t have a clear-cut answer to that question — but he did indicate that Pirates is going the route of a reboot, saying…

It’s hard to tell. You don’t know, you really don’t know … you don’t know how they come together. You just don’t know. 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.

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The actor in question here is obviously Johnny Depp, who was the central figure in the five previous Pirates movies as Captain Jack Sparrow. While the franchise was hugely successful in its early movies, the most recent film in series, 2017’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, got terrible reviews and grossed less than $800 million in theaters — still a lot of money, but a ways off from the $1 billion grossed by several of the previous entries, and against a reported budget of some $300 million.

In the years since Dead Men Tell No Tales, there have been various Pirates projects in development at Disney, some with Depp, some without, and at least one that would have been a female-centric spinoff that focused on a character played by Margot Robbie. Seven years later, none of those films have gone into production.

While Depp did become strongly identified with Pirates, the concept predates him by several decades — the first film was inspired by the popular Disneyland attraction (which, it should be noted, now includes animatronics of Depp as Jack Sparrow).

Bruckheimer’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is scheduled to open in theaters on April 19.