Pirates Skull

Johnny Depp Starts Up The ‘Pirates 4′ Media Circus

If you’ve seen a Disney movie recently, you’ll have noticed that the publicity machine for the upcoming ‘Pirates of The Caribbean 4′ has just started up. Despite the interchangably ‘not that great’ second and third installments, ‘On Stranger Tides’ is bound to take figures approximating the billion dollars that ‘Dead Man’s Chest’ made. A happier accompaniment to Barbados holidays we couldn’t imagine.

The road to Stranger Tides has been a strange tale in itself, and there have been many casualties along the way. On set, we’ve seen the loss of Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly who provided the core of the story round which the zany antics of Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow flitted around. In the boardroom however, the loss of Disney veteran Chairman Dick Cook was the biggest obstacle to the film’s completion. Without Cook’s influence in the early years, there would have been no Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. A Deppless ‘Pirates’ is not something anyone is comfortable in imagining. Though Depp professed the sacking caused a ‘crack’ in his enthusiasm, it was a passing assessment. Thankfully, it was Antigua holidays for Jack Sparrow all over again.

‘On Stranger Tides’ came to light when the Disney studio purchased the rights to the 80s fantasy novel of the same name. In the original ‘On Stranger Tides’, Jack Shandy is duped by a British professor into joining a crew to find the Fountain of Youth. It also involves the legendary pirate Blackbeard. Pirates of the Caribbean Four is inevitably only a loose adaptation of the book, but most of the key players and location are retained. Obviously, Jack Shandy is no more, swapped out for Jack Sparrow. However, Pirates Four will feature Blackbeard as the main antagonist and the Fountain of Youth will be the ultimate goal. No detours on Vietnam holidays or three headed monkeys in this film.

Film series rarely see their fourth installment, and the vitality of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is impressive: so too has been the turn around for this installment, considering it has only been four years since the last one. The general feeling is that the film series need not end here even: so long as this isn’t another ‘Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’, we may yet see more from Captain Jack Sparrow.

Sid Meier’s Pirates!-Skull and Crossbones