‘Pirates Of The Caribbean’ Reboot Is Disney’s Insurance Against ‘Star Wars’ Or Marvel Fatigue

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Deadline revealed a couple of days ago that

Walt Disney
was looking into “rebooting” the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, with help from Deadpool writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. Yes, there is something dispiriting about the writers of a game-changing superhero hit that was a smash precisely because it was unique unto itself being hired to reboot/retool a property that was initially a game-changing hit precisely because it was unique unto itself. It’s yet another sign that, no thanks to audiences, Hollywood has become a place that is less likely to create The Matrix than reboot The Matrix. But I digress.

For the record, the word “reboot” could mean any number of choices. It could be a straight-up revamp, keeping only the brand name and telling an entirely different high-seas pirate adventure. It could go the Halloween route and bring back the long-absent heroic character(s), in this case Orlando Bloom’s Will Turner (who had a small supporting role in Dead Men Tell No Tales) and Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth Swan (who had a wordless cameo in that same fifth installment). Or, to be honest, it could just be a straight-up sixth installment with the word “reboot” being thrown around in development.

Walt Disney is smart enough to notice that glorified “legacy sequels,” years-after-the-fact installments that bring back returning vets and cash in on nostalgia, have been a lot more successful than straight-up remakes or reboots. The studio released the definitive legacy-sequel, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The only issue is that the last Pirates film, Dead Men Tell No Tales, essentially played as a loose remake of Curse of the Black Pearl with Brenton Thwaites and Kaya Scodelario attempting to become the “new” Turner-Swann heroic couple. With a finale that saw Will and Elizabeth reunited, it was absolutely a passing-of-the-torch installment.

I argued last year that the franchise — and remember, the last movie made $794 million worldwide (it was the biggest global gross ever for a live-action film that didn’t top $200m domestic) — could survive without Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow. That may be part of the plan. But we can speculate on what “reboot” means for the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (whether in the mold of Amazing Spider-Man or of Force Awakens) until the cows come home. More interesting is a question of why Disney is trying so hard to keep the franchise alive. The truth is that Walt Disney hasn’t had much luck replicating its success.

The Pirates franchise is still a big deal, as the first three sequels grossed over/under $1 billion worldwide and the last one notched just under $800 million. But more importantly, even as Disney began to essentially take over the tentpole blockbuster realm in 2013, it was still stumbling in one vital area.

Disney is flying high thanks to Marvel movies, Star Wars movies, Pixar flicks, Disney Animation and the live-action fairy tales. But when it comes to creating homegrown live-action franchises, movies not specifically from a third-party entity or based upon a prior Disney animated success, the studio has been batting nearly 0.00 since 2004.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl was the first Walt Disney-branded movie (not Touchtone or Hollywood Pictures) to get a PG-13 rating. The Gore Verbinski flick showed that you could take a theme park ride, add an unconventional and untethered leading man (Johnny Depp), loosely replicate the original A New Hope formula (Jack = Han Solo, Will = Luke Skywalker, Elizabeth = Princess Leia) and strike global box office gold. It capitalized on a perfect storm of strong reviews, intriguing trailers and a summer that wasn’t exactly riding high between Memorial Day and July 4 weekend.

And then Disney spent nearly a decade trying to replicate its success. The likes of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice ($215m worldwide on a $150m budget), Prince of Persia ($330m on a $200m budget), John Carter ($284m on a $250m budget) and The Lone Ranger ($260m on a $215m budget) blatantly targeted young boys, and for a while it seemed like Disney was neglecting its core young girl demographics. Even the one arguable exception to the rule, Tron: Legacy ($400m on a $170m budget), was a sequel and partially capitalized on the cult status of its 1982 predecessor.

In this time, Disney acquired Marvel for $4 billion and then Lucasfilm for another $4b and used those (stereotypically) boy-friendly properties to fill in the gaps. The studio started kicking butt (in its animation and live-action departments) when it stopped trying to copy Pirates of the Caribbean and started trying to copy Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. That $1.025b smash from early 2010 essentially started the whole live-action fairy tale thing. But even after that, Tomorrowland ($209m on a $190m budget) and A Wrinkle in Time ($130m on a $103m budget) showed Disney’s struggles with creating “new” live-action franchises.

Today, the bulk of its successes are animated, live-action fantasies based on prior Disney IP or the MCU and Star Wars movies. That’s not nothing, especially if the goal is merely profits and market share. But Walt Disney hasn’t had a “new” successful live-action franchise since National Treasure ($347m on a $100m budget) in 2004 and arguably The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe ($745m on a $180m budget) in 2005. Fifteen years after Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, its success remains a great promise comparatively unfulfilled. Or maybe it’s more than just a formula.

Anyway, if folks stop caring about Star Wars after Star Wars Episode IX closes the book on the Skywalker/Solo saga, or if folks stop caring (as much) about the MCU after Avengers 4 closes the book on the first epic saga, then Disney may need a vibrant Pirates of the Caribbean series more than it did in 2017. Moreover, there aren’t a lot of Disney toons that are going to be anywhere as big as Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and Aladdin once those get checked off the list. The world isn’t champing at the bit for a Home on the Range remake.

I mean, I love The Great Mouse Detective, and I wouldn’t mind Disney trying to do The Black Cauldron “right” this time out, but most of what’s left to be remade will probably look at Cinderella ($543 million in 2015) as a best-case-scenario. And we’ve seen that these movies can do merely “OK” (Christopher Robin, Pete’s Dragon) if they aren’t explicitly cued into the zeitgeist. Moreover, as Alice Through the Looking Glass ($299m in 2016 on a $178m budget) shows, these live-action fairy tales may not be sequel-friendly. Disney is trying again with Maleficent 2 in 2020, but we’ll see.

I’m not arguing any of those scenarios are likely, but we don’t know what will become of the MCU and the Star Wars franchise after they essentially finish their big stories. We don’t know how the live-action remakes will play once the Mouse House has burned through its best IP. So having Pirates and (ideally) Avatar kicking butt is glorified insurance. If Disney can keep the Pirates franchise alive as a glorified pinch-hitter alongside the MCU, Avatar and various Lucasfilm flicks (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc.), then all the better, whether or not Marvel and Lucasfilm remain titans.

As big as Disney is right now, especially in terms of market share, its successes are coming from specific niches, in animation, nostalgia-driven live-action remakes and Lucasfilm/MCU content. The success of Pirates of the Caribbean, which has earned $4.5 billion worldwide over five installments, is the exception and not the rule when it comes to Disney’s in-house live-action franchises. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve credit for the current Lucasfilm and MCU successes, but that’s different. Fifteen years after Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl earned $654 million on a $140m budget, the franchise remains Walt Disney’s diamond in the rough.

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Deadline revealed a couple of days ago that

Walt Disney
was looking into “rebooting” the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, with help from Deadpool writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. Yes, there is something dispiriting about the writers of a game-changing superhero hit that was a smash precisely because it was unique unto itself being hired to reboot/retool a property that was initially a game-changing hit precisely because it was unique unto itself. It’s yet another sign that, no thanks to audiences, Hollywood has become a place that is less likely to create The Matrix than reboot The Matrix. But I digress.

For the record, the word “reboot” could mean any number of choices. It could be a straight-up revamp, keeping only the brand name and telling an entirely different high-seas pirate adventure. It could go the Halloween route and bring back the long-absent heroic character(s), in this case Orlando Bloom’s Will Turner (who had a small supporting role in Dead Men Tell No Tales) and Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth Swan (who had a wordless cameo in that same fifth installment). Or, to be honest, it could just be a straight-up sixth installment with the word “reboot” being thrown around in development.

Walt Disney is smart enough to notice that glorified “legacy sequels,” years-after-the-fact installments that bring back returning vets and cash in on nostalgia, have been a lot more successful than straight-up remakes or reboots. The studio released the definitive legacy-sequel, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The only issue is that the last Pirates film, Dead Men Tell No Tales, essentially played as a loose remake of Curse of the Black Pearl with Brenton Thwaites and Kaya Scodelario attempting to become the “new” Turner-Swann heroic couple. With a finale that saw Will and Elizabeth reunited, it was absolutely a passing-of-the-torch installment.

I argued last year that the franchise — and remember, the last movie made $794 million worldwide (it was the biggest global gross ever for a live-action film that didn’t top $200m domestic) — could survive without Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow. That may be part of the plan. But we can speculate on what “reboot” means for the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (whether in the mold of Amazing Spider-Man or of Force Awakens) until the cows come home. More interesting is a question of why Disney is trying so hard to keep the franchise alive. The truth is that Walt Disney hasn’t had much luck replicating its success.

The Pirates franchise is still a big deal, as the first three sequels grossed over/under $1 billion worldwide and the last one notched just under $800 million. But more importantly, even as Disney began to essentially take over the tentpole blockbuster realm in 2013, it was still stumbling in one vital area.

Disney is flying high thanks to Marvel movies, Star Wars movies, Pixar flicks, Disney Animation and the live-action fairy tales. But when it comes to creating homegrown live-action franchises, movies not specifically from a third-party entity or based upon a prior Disney animated success, the studio has been batting nearly 0.00 since 2004.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl was the first Walt Disney-branded movie (not Touchtone or Hollywood Pictures) to get a PG-13 rating. The Gore Verbinski flick showed that you could take a theme park ride, add an unconventional and untethered leading man (Johnny Depp), loosely replicate the original A New Hope formula (Jack = Han Solo, Will = Luke Skywalker, Elizabeth = Princess Leia) and strike global box office gold. It capitalized on a perfect storm of strong reviews, intriguing trailers and a summer that wasn’t exactly riding high between Memorial Day and July 4 weekend.

And then Disney spent nearly a decade trying to replicate its success. The likes of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice ($215m worldwide on a $150m budget), Prince of Persia ($330m on a $200m budget), John Carter ($284m on a $250m budget) and The Lone Ranger ($260m on a $215m budget) blatantly targeted young boys, and for a while it seemed like Disney was neglecting its core young girl demographics. Even the one arguable exception to the rule, Tron: Legacy ($400m on a $170m budget), was a sequel and partially capitalized on the cult status of its 1982 predecessor.

In this time, Disney acquired Marvel for $4 billion and then Lucasfilm for another $4b and used those (stereotypically) boy-friendly properties to fill in the gaps. The studio started kicking butt (in its animation and live-action departments) when it stopped trying to copy Pirates of the Caribbean and started trying to copy Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. That $1.025b smash from early 2010 essentially started the whole live-action fairy tale thing. But even after that, Tomorrowland ($209m on a $190m budget) and A Wrinkle in Time ($130m on a $103m budget) showed Disney’s struggles with creating “new” live-action franchises.

Today, the bulk of its successes are animated, live-action fantasies based on prior Disney IP or the MCU and Star Wars movies. That’s not nothing, especially if the goal is merely profits and market share. But Walt Disney hasn’t had a “new” successful live-action franchise since National Treasure ($347m on a $100m budget) in 2004 and arguably The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe ($745m on a $180m budget) in 2005. Fifteen years after Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, its success remains a great promise comparatively unfulfilled. Or maybe it’s more than just a formula.

Anyway, if folks stop caring about Star Wars after Star Wars Episode IX closes the book on the Skywalker/Solo saga, or if folks stop caring (as much) about the MCU after Avengers 4 closes the book on the first epic saga, then Disney may need a vibrant Pirates of the Caribbean series more than it did in 2017. Moreover, there aren’t a lot of Disney toons that are going to be anywhere as big as Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and Aladdin once those get checked off the list. The world isn’t champing at the bit for a Home on the Range remake.

I mean, I love The Great Mouse Detective, and I wouldn’t mind Disney trying to do The Black Cauldron “right” this time out, but most of what’s left to be remade will probably look at Cinderella ($543 million in 2015) as a best-case-scenario. And we’ve seen that these movies can do merely “OK” (Christopher Robin, Pete’s Dragon) if they aren’t explicitly cued into the zeitgeist. Moreover, as Alice Through the Looking Glass ($299m in 2016 on a $178m budget) shows, these live-action fairy tales may not be sequel-friendly. Disney is trying again with Maleficent 2 in 2020, but we’ll see.

I’m not arguing any of those scenarios are likely, but we don’t know what will become of the MCU and the Star Wars franchise after they essentially finish their big stories. We don’t know how the live-action remakes will play once the Mouse House has burned through its best IP. So having Pirates and (ideally) Avatar kicking butt is glorified insurance. If Disney can keep the Pirates franchise alive as a glorified pinch-hitter alongside the MCU, Avatar and various Lucasfilm flicks (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, etc.), then all the better, whether or not Marvel and Lucasfilm remain titans.

As big as Disney is right now, especially in terms of market share, its successes are coming from specific niches, in animation, nostalgia-driven live-action remakes and Lucasfilm/MCU content. The success of Pirates of the Caribbean, which has earned $4.5 billion worldwide over five installments, is the exception and not the rule when it comes to Disney’s in-house live-action franchises. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve credit for the current Lucasfilm and MCU successes, but that’s different. Fifteen years after Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl earned $654 million on a $140m budget, the franchise remains Walt Disney’s diamond in the rough.