Margot Robbie, famously known for her character Harley Quinn in DC’s The Suicide Squad (2021), said in an exclusive interview with Vanity Fair late last year that she had been developing a Pirates of the Caribbean film at Disney for a long time now.
The franchise saw its last film – Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales in 2017 and there hasn’t been a sixth outing of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow ever since.
The Hollywood Reporter broke the news in December of 2018 after an interview with Sean Bailey (film division production chief at Disney), that Deadpool (2016) writers – Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick were hired to helm the next.
Shortly after, Deadline revealed that Reese and Wernick had moved on from the project. A year later, The Hollywood Reporter noted in an exclusive piece that Robbie, along with Birds of Prey (2020) writer Christina Hodson, had been pitching her idea to Disney to convince them to develop a female-led spin-off and ditch Depp.
Margot Robbie’s Pirates of the Caribbean Plan
Riding high on the success of her latest – Barbie, Robbie has proven her ability to headline a $4.5 billion Pirates franchise. But, she wouldn’t have been alone in it.
She said to Vanity Fair that the film would be a spin-off instead of a reboot and that she wanted Disney to consider her 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”
Christina Hodson’s Birds of Prey convinced Disney enough to get Robbie to discuss the potential of her idea in 2020, according to THR.
Disney’s Response To Ditching Johnny Depp
Since Margot Robbie’s Birds of Prey could only collect $201 million globally, Disney execs, as she put it to Vanity Fair, thought that her female-led iteration may not be able to land a collection close to Depp’s fifth installment; it collected $795 million.
“We thought it would’ve been really cool, but I guess they don’t want to do it,” she said.
However, it was also reported in THR’s 2018 interview with Sean Bailey that Disney was definitely looking forward to moving ahead with a reboot with Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick; without Depp!
Margot Robbie’s Barbie has already clocked $1.3 billion at the box office, and Disney could eventually put the idea back on the table. Barbie stars Ryan Gosling, Simu Liu, Emma Mackey, Ncuti Gatwa, Will Ferrell, and Issa Rae.
Barbie will exclusively head over to HBO’s Max for streaming.
Source: Vanity Fair
