The fans were not at all happy when the news broke that Johnny Depp would not be returning for the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean reboot, with many finding the very notion of a PotC movie without Jack Sparrow to be downright self-contradictory. But for better or worse, there are many clear reasons why Disney would feel they’d stand to benefit from dropping the old captain, and one of them is a matter of budget.
In a new Forbes piece, the point is made that by choosing not to bring back Depp for this next picture, the studio is saving a pretty hefty expense, with the actor earning a sizeable salary of $90 million per picture. And while this figure may have been deemed worth it back when the franchise was at its commercial peak, the significant dip in box office gross marked by 2017’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales has likely encouraged the bosses at Disney to get just a little thriftier with their spending.
Of course, the notion that Depp’s $90 million may no longer be worth the expense ties into various other potential reasons for shelving the character of Jack Sparrow. Specifically, Depp is no longer the megastar he once was, and while this likely has plenty to do with the controversy surrounding him at the moment, a lot of viewers have quite simply started to find once-novel actor’s usual shtick to be all too predictable.
That being said, with Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald recently proving a hit in the face of negative reviews, we can hardly pretend that Depp is box office poison these days, but nonetheless, it’s apparent that he’s become an actor with a fair amount of baggage. And as much as the fans may hate to see him go, it’s no mystery why Disney would feel that the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is now due for some fresh blood.
