With a world-wide box-office haul of over $4.5 billion spread across five films, the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN series is certainly up there on the list of the highest-grossing franchises of all-time, but after the last film, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES, wound up under-performing compared to the previous films, not to mention the decidedly mixed reviews, Disney began exploring the possibilities of rebooting the franchise.
Last October, Disney reached out to Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, writers of the DEADPOOL films, to pen the script for the possible reboot, but it seems that the studio will need bring in some new talent as Deadline has reported that Reese and Wernick are off the project. Disney's film production chief Sean Bailey had been quite excited about bringing Reese and Wernick onboard, saying that they were going to "make Pirates punk rock again" and give the franchise a much-needed "kick in the pants." As for where Disney goes from here, it's not certain, but some insiders have said that the search is already underway for replacements while others say that the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN franchise will be shelved for the foreseeable future. Personally, I think it might be best to leave the franchise alone for a while before relaunching it a few years down the road. The films are certainly a hell of a lot of fun, and, as we've seen, definitely bring in the box-office bucks, so I can't imagine the studio scuttling the series permanently. Deadline also notes that there's been some talk of transforming the franchise into a TV series, but that the budgetary and logistical challenges will likely keep that from becoming a reality.
Should Disney relaunch the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN franchise in future, it's looking increasingly likely that it will do so without Johnny Depp reprising his role of Captain Jack Sparrow. Although Depp's performance is the very reason why the franchise took off in the first place, audiences haven't been quite so enamored with his pirate-shtick in recent years. As an added bonus for Disney, if they do cut Depp loose, it's been estimated that it could save them as much as $90 million in production costs. Wowza.
Now that the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN franchise had hit another bump in the road, do you think Disney should keep moving forward or let the franchise finally slip beneath the waves?