Borrowing elements from Tim Powers’ novel “On Stranger Tides,” “Pirates of the Caribbean 4” is supposed to be closer in spirit to the original film, “Curse of the Black Pearl,” in that it tells a stand-alone story of pirate plundering with a supernatural twist — specifically, Captain Jack Sparrow’s search for the Fountain of Youth.
Early buzz suggests that director Rob Marshall has delivered a film that’s quite good, and a new report from at HitFix indicates that Disney thinks so too as the studio is apparently ready to set sail on “Pirates of the Caribbean 5 & 6.”
HitFix reports that Disney has been quietly telling cast and crew to save a chunk of time in the very near future so they can shoot “Pirates 5 & 6” back-to-back as one giant film, which will then be released as two films.
This news isn't surprising considering this is the same strategy that was employed for “Dead Man’s Chest” and “At World’s End” — the two previous movies in the franchise.
I thought the franchise suffered a bit from that strategy as there was more cohesion only within the last two films rather than all three.
Regardless of what myself or others thought of those latter movies, they did big business at the box office and Disney saved quite a bit of cash by filming them back-to-back. So as far as they’re concerned — that formula works.
As long as they don’t make the mistake of retroactively refitting this film into the first chapter of a new trilogy, I’m totally up for this. Since the fourth film is based on a book, the writers would have a difficult time connecting two more stories to the tale, so I think it would be best to make more stand-alone features, like “Indiana Jones,” rather than a large continuing arc in trilogies, like “Star Wars.”
However, with Johnny Depp already scheduled for “Dark Shadows” and “The Lone Ranger” in 2011, it's unknown as to when these sequels will begin production. It's also unclear whether or not Rob Marshall will return to direct these two sequels much like Gore Verbinski did for the first trilogy.
The official trailer for the fourth "Pirates" debuts online Dec. 13, but you don’t have to wait until then to see the first bits of footage from the newest entry in Disney’s blockbuster franchise.
Entertainment Tonight paid a visit to the set of “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” and in this six-minute video we get our first glimpse of Captain Jack Sparrow and the rest of the cast in action as well as an interview with producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
Okay, so there’s probably like 30 seconds of actual set footage and five and a half minutes of ET bragging about how exclusive all of this is — but I have to admit, I’m pretty optimistic about what I’m seeing here.
“Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” sails in to 2D, 3D and IMAX 3D theaters on May 20, 2011.
Update: And here is the trailer for the new film.
