Disney Rebooting ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ With the Sixth Film
By George Robbins
Disney is now a juggernaut in the entertainment industry because over the past 20 years or so they have developed films that have captivated audiences and created a whole new market for them. Before that, however, they were having a difficult time bringing in audiences the way that they used to with the older animated films. At the time, the parks were the best source of income for the company, but they wanted to get in on the movie business even more. In order to cement a place in the box-office, they would need a live-action hit that would give them a leg to stand on for future entries. While still years off from acquiring Lucasfilms, Marvel, and even Pixar, they had to come up with something that would end up being a hit. This is how we ended up with the hit that start a successful franchise, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’
The ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ franchise was Disney’s biggest money-maker franchise before they took over Marvel, Pixar, and Lucasfilms. It gave them a good leg to stand on when they made their push into live-action movies and paved the way for many others to come. The first three films in the franchise propelled Disney forward and gave people characters that they were highly entertained by. They needed the win at the time because most everything else they were doing was considered a failure and people didn’t find most of their content interesting, save for the year before the release of ‘Pirates’ with the movie ‘Lilo & Stitch.’ With the new forward momentum, they made their acquisitions and helped build or maintain massive franchises which created many marketing opportunities for them.
Even some parts of their parks were changed in small ways to reflect moments from the movies and even this was a well loved idea among everyday guests. The movie was a success based upon the strong story it presented and the phenomenal acting that gave us a good idea as to what the characters were really like. Johnny Depp’s depiction of Captain Jack Sparrow will remain as one of the most memorable characters to ever be in a live-action film. Thus, the next two movies were spawned from the original which told a story that followed a specific group of characters and the adventure they found themselves on. However, the fourth and fifth films took a step in the opposite direction and were not really all that well received due to what appears to be a change in the characters and what made the first films interesting.
The story of Captain Jack Sparrow was one that many believed should have ended after the third film like William Turner’s and Elizabeth Swann’s. Instead, the adventure continued and people started getting tired of the same old characters, so instead of stopping the films altogether, Disney is going to reboot the series in the sixth film. There are even two versions of the film that could end up playing out where one is a soft reboot that could possibly contain some of the same characters from the original movies and the other is a hard reboot. If they go with the hard reboot, then the movie would feature a cast of entirely new characters going on new adventures that haven’t been seen in the other films. In the end, they will more than likely go with the second one in order to completely move away from the tale of Captain Jack Sparrow as his tale has essentially ended.