Johnny Depp has put a price on his return as Captain Jack Sparrow, and it is not a dollar figure. The actor told Entertainment Tonight he would reprise the role for a sixth Pirates of the Caribbean film only to “send them off on a better note.”
The bottom line: Depp wants a proper finale for the franchise he anchored for 14 years across five films released from 2003 to 2017.
By the Numbers
Five films. Fourteen years. One Oscar nomination for the first installment, The Curse of the Black Pearl. The most recent entry, Dead Men Tell No Tales, arrived in 2017. Depp made the comments while promoting Ebenezer, his current comeback vehicle.
The Figure That Matters
Trust. Depp said he would work with producer Jerry Bruckheimer “tomorrow for anything.”
“If it’s Jerry, I trust him. We have a deep friendship,” Depp said.
Bruckheimer produced all five previous films. In 2022, he told The Hollywood Reporter the studio was “getting very close” on a sixth script written by Jeff Nathanson. He described the project as a reboot, noting “you don’t have to wait for certain actors.” Last August, Bruckheimer told Deadline he was still talking to Depp and working on a screenplay, adding, “Hopefully we can get this done.”
A Sharp Pivot
Under oath, he said even “$300 million and a million alpacas” could not convince him to return to the Disney franchise.
That testimony followed his exit from the Fantastic Beasts series and a UK libel loss against The Sun. The actor has since settled his defamation case against ex-wife Amber Heard and starred in the French film Jeanne du Barry.
Franchise at a Crossroads
Disney has struggled to chart a course since 2017. A Margot Robbie-led spinoff written by Christina Hodson was in development but stalled; Robbie told Vanity Fair in 2022 the studio did not want to move forward. Bruckheimer has said he hopes to produce both the reboot and the Robbie project.
Investors will note: Pirates remains Disney’s only theme-park ride turned billion-dollar film franchise. The studio must now weigh Depp’s rehabilitation against the “circus” his return invites, as well as whether a finale built around Sparrow serves a reboot strategy designed to bypass him.
“It’s a reboot, but if it was up to me, he would be in it,” Bruckheimer told Entertainment Weekly. “He created Captain Jack. That was not on the page.”
Sources
- Johnny Depp on His One Condition to Return as Jack Sparrow for ‘Pirates of the Caribbean 6’
- Johnny Depp Has One Condition To Return For Pirates Of The Caribbean 6 – SlashFilm
- Johnny Depp Reveals One Condition for ‘Pirates of the Caribbean 6’ Return
- Johnny Depp Breaks Silence on Jack Sparrow Return for 'Pirates of the Caribbean 6' – AOL
- Johnny Depp says he will return as Captain Jack Sparrow for Pirates of the Carribean 6 on one condition
Photo: Harald Krichel (CC BY-SA 3.0)
