Jerry Bruckheimer on new ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ films, Johnny Depp’s return

The longtime producer of the Pirates of the Caribbean films told Entertainment Weekly he hopes to reboot the franchise and make a standalone film in the universe from Margot Robbie.

“It’s two different movies,” Bruckheimer said. “We hope to get ’em both made, and I think Disney agrees they really want to make the Margot one, too,” Bruckheimer says.

Bruckheimer adds he’d produce the film that would kick off the new reboot, with a script from Jeff Nathanson, who wrote the upcoming Young Woman and the Sea. The second film would be from Robbie’s team, with a script by Birds of Prey scribe Christina Hodson.

Bruckheimer says while the reboot would not follow characters from the original series, such as Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow, he would support them returning.

“It’s a reboot, but if it was up to me, he would be in it,” Bruckheimer said. “I love him. He’s a good friend. He’s an amazing artist and he’s a unique look. He created Captain Jack. That was not on the page, that was him doing a little Pepé Le Pew and Keith Richards. That was his interpretation of Jack Sparrow.”

While less is known about Robbie’s Pirates film, she did give a sneak peek as to what one could expect from it in a 2022 Vanity Fair cover story.

“We had an idea and we were developing it for a while, ages ago, to have more of a female-led — not totally female-led, but just a different kind of story — which we thought would’ve been really cool, but I guess they don’t want to do it,” Robbie said at the time.