Disney’s blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is setting sail into uncharted waters, after the studio signalled their intentions to move forward on two new movies, neither of which will feature Johnny Depp’s iconic Captain Jack Sparrow. Despite earning over $4.5 billion at the box office, reviews kept getting progressively worse with each further installment, and while the series was in desperate need of a creative overhaul, dumping the most popular character and main draw probably isn’t the best way to go about it.
The sixth film in the timeline that kicked off with The Curse of the Black Pearl currently has one half of Dead Men Tell No Tales‘ directing duo, Joachim Ronning, set to fly solo behind the camera, while Margot Robbie is developing a female-driven spinoff alongside Birds of Prey writer Christina Hodson, and based on the reactions so far, it would appear that the fans aren’t particularly interested in either of them without Depp’s involvement.
Up until this point, Pirates of the Caribbean has relied almost entirely on fiction to power the narrative, with the notable exception of Ian McShane’s Blackbeard in On Stranger Tides. However, insider Daniel Richtman now claims that the next few movies will look to introduce more real-life historical pirates into the mix. That being said, any genuine sense of realism is not to be expected from a franchise that’s given us ghosts, mermaids, squid people and zombie sharks among other things.
If Disney need inspiration for how to combine fictional creations and real people into a pirate story with at least some basis in events that actually happened, then they should look to Starz’s severely underrated series Black Sails, which was a four-season prequel to Treasure Island that reached deep into the established lore, mythology and history associated with swashbuckling, but didn’t skimp on any of the action.
