It’s official: there will be a fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. The release is tentatively scheduled for July 2017, a full 6 years after Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides hit theaters. Operating under the subtitle Dead Men Tell No Tales, the next iteration of the Pirates franchise was originally set for release in 2015, but was delayed after Johnny Depp’s Lone Ranger ran into development hell. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Kon-Tiki directors Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg are now working together to create Pirates 5. No plot details have been officially released.
It isn’t surprising that there’s another Pirates movie in the works as the quartet of films has grossed $3.7 billion and the fourth installment alone crossed the $1 billion mark, despite horrendous reviews from critics. The fifth film will face stiff competition at the box office from Fantastic Four 2 and Despicable Me 3. To offset this competition, Jeff Nathanson (Catch Me If You Can and The Terminal) has been hired to help the team write the screenplay. Disney production president Sean Bailey explained the reasoning for this back in the fall of 2013, “Like audiences around the globe, we have high expectations for Jack Sparrow’s next adventure and we want to have all the right elements in place. We’re not there yet and we want to make sure this project is everything these wonderful characters and of course the fans deserve.” With Comic Con in full swing this weekend, you may expect Disney to drop hints about this newest Pirates development, but don’t be surprised if their focus stays on Marvel and their TV line-up.
