‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ Reboot Won’t Star Johnny Depp

Disney has officially confirmed that they’re moving forward on a new Pirates of the Caribbean movie without Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, the only part of those movies that was at all memorable to anyone. Seriously, what happened in those movies that didn’t involve Johnny Depp? Could you think of a single thing without looking it up? I didn’t think so.

Disney’s president of production Sean Bailey confirmed that the plan is to make a new movie without Depp in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

You’ve hired Deadpool scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick to work on a possible Pirates of the Caribbean reboot. Can Pirates survive without Johnny Depp?

We want to bring in a new energy and vitality. I love the [Pirates] movies, but part of the reason Paul and Rhett are so interesting is that we want to give it a kick in the pants. And that’s what I’ve tasked them with.

To be fair, they could make basically any pirate movie and call it Pirates of the Caribbean. It’s based on a boat ride where some drunk pirates chase women around. All they have to do to succeed here is not try to recreate Johnny Depp’s character and focus on making a good movie that people want to see. But this is Disney we’re talking about so I give them about 50-50 odds here.

This seems to be related to the declining profits on the last Pirates and not based on the eight people declared Depp cancelled after his acrimonious divorce with Amber Heard during which they both accused the other of being abusive. The accusations haven’t hurt Depp’s career, as he just appeared in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald and has half a dozen other movies in production or pre-production.