Pirates of the Caribbean (2003)

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Directed by: Gore Verbinski
Written by: Terri Rossio, Ted Elliott
Produced by: Jerry Bruckheimer
Music by: Hans Zimmer (replacing Alan Silvestri who was fired in May 2003 due to creative differences) and Klaus Badelt

Production started on: From October 9, 2002 to December in various sound stages; location shooting in the Caribbean from January-February with filming wrapping in the first week of March 2003
Release Date: July 9, 2003 (Disney supposedly considered pushing back the movie to November 2003 but ended up moving it up from its original 7/27/03 slot)

Budget: $82 million officially, but industry analysts estimate it at $140 million plus $40 million in marketing costs
U.S. Opening Weekend: $46.4 million
Box Office: $$299,47 million in the U.S., $611 million worldwide

CAST

Captain Jack Sparrow... Johnny Depp
Elizabeth Swann... Keira Knightley
Pirate Captain Barbossa (formerly Capt. Blackheart)... Geoffrey Rush
Will Turner... Orlando Bloom
Governor Swann... Jonathan Pryce (Tom Wilkinson was originally considered)
Pirate Ragetti... Mackenzie Crook
Pintel... Lee Arenberg
Norrington... Jack Davenport
Officer Groves... Greg Ellis
Grapple... Trevor Goddard
Martin Klebba .... Marty
Scarlett... Lauren Maher
Joshua Gibb... Kevin McNally
Estrella... Paula J. Newman
Bosun... Isaac C. Singleton Jr.
Young Will Turner... Dylan Smith

STORY

This is spoiler-filled--read at your own risk, sailor! Taken from an August 2002 FilmForce article.

The film begins at sea, where we meet 12-year-old Elizabeth Swann, aboard the H.M.S. Dauntless. She is accompanying her father to their new home in Port Royal. There has been talk of pirates on the ship and Elizabeth tells her father, 'I think it'd be fascinating to meet a pirate.' Needless to say, this upsets her father and the ship's captain, Norrington, who has sworn to rid the sea of the pillaging scum. But Elizabeth gets her wish when the ship comes upon the wreckage of a British vessel. After plucking a young boy from the water, the crew spots The Black Pearl, a legendary pirate vessel with imposing black sails. Flash forward eight years. Elizabeth is now a striking 20-year-old woman. Her father, now Governor Swann, is prompting her to attend the promotion ceremony for 'Commodore' Norrington, whom he hopes she'll marry. We're also reacquainted with the boy who was saved from the shipwreck, Will Turner, now a handsome young man. Elizabeth still carries a gold medallion that she took from him after the rescue. Johnny Depp is Captain Jack Sparrow, a 'swashbuckling rogue' who shows up in Port Royal aboard his tiny, leaky ship, the Jolly Mon. It doesn't take long for trouble to find Jack. He spots the H.M.S. Interceptor docked in the harbor and sneaks on board to take a closer look at the new 'fastest ship in the fleet.' At the nearby ceremony, Elizabeth, who has been struggling all day with a tight new corset, faints and falls into the water. Jack dives in and saves her life, but his goodwill backfires when Norrington spots the 'pirate's brand' on his wrist. Norrington, whose hatred of pirates won't be undone by a single good deed, has Jack locked up. That night in his cell, Jack hears the rumble of cannon fire outside the prison walls. Pirates are attacking! The Black Pearl has sailed into the harbor and is turning its guns on nearby Fort Charles and on the town itself. Port Royal is under siege. Buildings are being demolished and fires are springing up everywhere. Pirates have begun to come ashore in longboats to wreak havoc on the town. Back at the Governor's mansion, Elizabeth fends off the invaders long enough to come up with a plan. She allows herself to be captured, but invokes the "right of parlay" (something she learned thanks to her childhood fascination with pirates). Parlay is part of the pirate's code that allows a captured party the right to be taken to a ship's captain unharmed. Still locked in the jail, which has been half-demolished by cannon fire, Jack is startled when two pirates burst in thinking they've found the town's armory. Jack and the pirates know each other... and aren't exactly bosom buddies. They start an argument which ends with one of the pirate's reaching through the cell bars to try and choke him. It's then that Jack notices something horrific. The pirate's wrist and hand, when bathed in a beam of moonlight, are skeletal. The stories he's heard are true... the crew of The Black Pearl has been cursed! Meanwhile, Elizabeth is brought before Captain Blackheart. She identifies herself as Elizabeth TURNER (to keep them from knowing they have the governor's daughter on board), and demands that he leave Port Royal and never return. He laughs Elizabeth off until she reveals a secret bargaining tool, the medallion she wears around her neck – the one she took from Will years ago. There's something about that medallion... the captain desperately wants it. He agrees to her offer, but only in part. The Black Pearl turns out to sea with Elizabeth still on board... a prisoner. Will frees Jack from jail and the two make a plan to commandeer a Navy ship and go after Elizabeth. Commodore Norrington also sets out on a rescue mission under orders from Governor Swann. A captive on the ship, Elizabeth soon learns the true cursed nature of The Black Pearl's crew. Captain Blackheart tells her, "The moonlight shows us for what we really are! We are not among the living, and so we cannot die... but neither are we dead!" She is horrified to learn that he intends to somehow use her to break the curse. "You're going to deliver us from this hell," he says. "You and the blood that runs through your veins." While Will and Jack are in hot pursuit of The Black Pearl, Jack reveals that he once knew Will's father, William Turner. But he knew him by his pirate name, "Bootstrap Bill." Will must face the realization that his father, whom he always believed was a merchant marine, was in fact a pirate. The pair know that Blackheart is on his way to Isla de Muerte, but they can't get there without more men – they've done good to get this far with a two man crew. They dock in Tortuga, the dregs of the Caribbean, to round up some of Jack's cronies. As you might imagine, our source's time was running short and he cut to the Cliff's Notes version. Will and Jack manage to rescue Liz, but Will is captured in the process. The pirates plan to use him to break the curse instead. Can Jack and Elizabeth reach Isla de Muerte in time?

INTERESTING FACTS

The Disneyland ride opened on March 18, 1967. Walt Disney originally wanted to make "Pirates of the Caribbean" a walk through attraction but everyone advised against it because no one would want to walk through the attraction. "It's a Small World" was also planned this way. Walt finally made It's a "Small World" a boat ride. And, when they built Pirates, they used the same flat bottom boats as "Small World". "Pirates of the Carribean" was Walt Disney's favorite ride, even though he died before it was finished -which was why it was his favorite: he always liked the "next one" best!

Walt Disney originally came up with the concept of a pirate adventure ride in the 1950s and presented the idea to the staff at Walt Disney Imagineering. A decade later, the ride debuted in 1967 at Disneyland. The pirates made their first appearance at Disney World in 1973, two years after the park opened. Pirates have occasionally run afoul of the politically correct crowd. In 1997, Disney officials shut down Disneyland's ride for a face lift--and in the process changed the scenes in which the audio-animatronic pirates chased buxom women. After some tinkering, Disney Imagineers placed trays of turkey and wine in the maidens' hands, so that it would appear the pirates were chasing them for food and drink. In Orlando, the women in the attraction have always chased the pirates, using brooms and pitchforks to push them out of their houses.

Given how well The Country Bears turned out (that was before its theatrical release!), Disney studio executives hurried movie versions of other theme park favorites on the development fast track: Mark Perez turned in a Pirates of the Caribbean treatment in early 2001, that was rewritten by Jay Wolpert. And in April 2001, the Mouse hired two new writers to begin work on a Haunted Mansion screenplay, while a screenplay for a Country Bears sequel had been commissionned. Pirates of the Caribbean is part of the Mouse House plans to make use of properties they own rather than purchasing or developing others.

Jerry Bruckheimer (Top Gun, Pearl Harbor) was attached to this Disney live action feature in December 2001. Bruckheimer's arrival would seem to suggest higher visibility and a bigger budget for the film. The producer decided very early on to add a supernatural element to the story: "Disney came to me and said, 'We're going to make this movie, Pirates of the Caribbean,' and I wasn't nuts about the script. I said it was an interesting idea, and there were some elements of the script that are great, and we brought in the two writers who wrote Shrek and Zorro [Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio]. They're really smart and have written some terrific movies. They turned it into something that's more supernatural and really fascinating. The pirates are cursed, and that really excited me."

Jerry Bruckheimer isn't the kind of Hollywood producer who is used to hearing, "No, sir." When he needed $2 million to redo the score of Pirates of the Caribbean, studio executives gave it to him without question. By all appearances, Jerry Bruckheimer has succeeded in both movies and now television by creating the contemporary version of an entertainment factory. His movies mostly follow a formula: boy or girl faces tough challenge and then triumphs, often blowing up many things in the process. His TV shows are largely crime-related. He generally leaves the day-to-day work to a band of trusted colleagues, then speeds up the final production line once a project is in hand. And, ultimately, he personally asserts a high degree of quality control, fine-tuning the music and sound and editing late into the night if necessary, so that each project has the style that audiences have come to expect from a Jerry Bruckheimer production. "My name goes on it and I don't want to be embarrassed. If I made movies for critics, I'd be living in a small Hollywood apartment," he said. "Art is in the eyes of the beholder. If you love it and the critics hate it, does that mean you are wrong? I don't think so." At a test screening of Pirates of the Caribbean last Tuesday in Los Angeles, several hundred moviegoers cheered wildly as the lights went down in the theater and again as they went back up. At the back of the theater, Jerry Bruckheimer, wearing a jean jacket and boots, and with a half-eaten bag of popcorn in hand, blended into the crowd. That is an image he likes to project. "Jerry always tells his directors, 'I'm just a guy with my hand in the popcorn,' " said Nina Jacobson, president of the Buena Vista Motion Picture Group at the Walt Disney Company, which distributes most of Jerry Bruckheimer's films. "He has an uncanny ability to identify with the audience." Meticulous as he is, he still likes to wrap things up as quickly as possible after a film is shot. For Pirates, he said he gave the crew only about 12 weeks to complete post-production work, much less than the industry average of 22 weeks. Two weeks ago, he was at the studio until midnight with the director, Gore Verbinski, haggling over whether to cut two scenes. In the end, "it was only seven seconds" that were cut, Jerry Bruckheimer said, "but it was tighter."The next night, he listened intently to the movie's sound and gave notes to his staff about what he wanted changed. He says he does not watch his movies again after they are released because he sees too many things he would like to fix.

Jerry Bruckheimer says he rolled his eyes when the studio approached him with the idea. "I said, 'Pirates of the Caribbean? The ride?!' " But he liked the script. "If we got it right, we’ve got the next Raiders." The producer was turned off when Disney Studios sent him a script for a movie version of its theme park ride Pirates of the Caribbean. It was bland, too tame, and came across as "a straight pirate movie"; he told Disney, "I don't know what to do with this." Still, he was intrigued and brought aboard some like-minded creative types to jazz up the project. He called on Shrek screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, whose cleverness and wit he admired. The pair came up with a twist that hooked Bruckheimer and Disney. The pirates would be cursed. As the writers began pounding out a new script, Bruckheimer wooed director Gore Verbinski, best known for his stylish and scary thriller The Ring, released last year. Meanwhile, he was determined to snag a star not known for light-hearted family features. Bruckheimer saw Johnny Depp as "an edgy actor who will kind of counter the Disney 'Country Bears' soft quality and tell an audience that an adult and teenager can go see this and have a good time with it."

The script for Pirates was penned by a quartet of writers, with the most recent draft by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio (Shrek, The Mask of Zorro, The Road to El Dorado). The pair were hired to add the supernatural elements to a previous draft by Stuart Beattie. Beattie's version was a brush-up of the first draft by screenwriter Jay Wolpert (The Count of Monte Cristo). Beattie, regarded as an expert on pirates, was brought on in March 2002 to add realism.

Pirates of the Caribbean is described by the studio a big-budget "romantic action adventure" produced by high-profile film maker Jerry Bruckheimer (Pearl Harbor) with Clayton Townsend. The movie features a daring attempt to rescue someone from dangerous pirates. "I've always wanted to get involved in a pirate movie," Bruckheimer said in May 2002. "It [Pirates] was one of my favorite attractions growing up."

The Hollywood Reporter announced in June 2002 that Johnny Depp was in negotiations to sign a two-picture deal with Disney that will see the actor working on back-to-back action projects for producer Jerry Bruckheimer: Pirates of the Caribbean and Takedown. Depp would shoot Pirates for director Gore Verbinski in October. Pirates focuses on a daring attempt to rescue someone from dangerous pirates who are trying to reverse an ancient curse. Depp will play the lead pirate, Jack. The most recent draft of Pirates, which is based on the legendary Disney theme park ride, was penned by Shrek scribes Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott, working from earlier drafts from Jay Wolpert and Stuart Beattie.

A couple of weeks later, it was announced that Geoffrey Rush was in negotiations to play the pirate Capt. Blackheart.

Johnny Depp has shunned action movies, but producer Jerry Bruckheimer flew to Paris and convinced him the part would be a challenge, not a chore. "Depp wouldn't be anyone's first choice for this movie, but Jerry insisted and he was right," says Disney marketing chief Oren Aviv. "He always gets actors on the way up--who knew Ben Affleck before Armageddon or Josh Hartnett before Pearl Harbor? Orlando Bloom is now the hottest guy in terms of online buzz, but Jerry knew about him before anyone else."

"Weird," 40-year-old Depp admitted in a July 2003 interview. "I was completely shocked. It came out of nowhere. A Disney-Bruckheimer thing, big budget. You wouldn't think, or at least I didn't think, that they would be thinking of me first." Pirates of the Caribbean felt "kind of like infiltrating the enemy camp," said Depp, though he added that he never consciously avoided big Hollywood productions. "It was more, I think, I've made it pretty clear in terms of the work that I've done what it is I do and what I like to do with characters." Producer Jerry Bruckheimer said he knew audiences might be dissuaded from seeing Pirates because of its legacy as a Disney ride. "I felt you needed to counter the Disney name. I knew that [adding Depp] would tell audiences this movie is something different. This is not, Country Bears."

Johnny Depp wasted no time taking his character beyond what even Bruckheimer had envisioned. He modeled himself after Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, whom he's known since the mid-1980s. "I was reading about the 18th century pirates and thought they were kind of like rock stars. So, when I thought, 'Who is the greatest rock 'n' roll star of all time?' it was Keith," Depp said. The actor shocked Bruckheimer and Disney executives before shooting began when he decided to add a touch to his portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow. He had gold caps placed on all his front teeth. "Jerry was slightly uncomfortable and the Disney executives weren't exactly enthusiastic about it," Depp recalled. In a compromise, he uncapped a few. "I said, 'Look, these are the choices I made. You know my work. So either trust me or give me the boot.' And luckily, they didn't."

For a few months in late 2002, the movie was renamed The Pirates of the Caribbean, and a logo was then created for this alternative title.

According to an August 2002 script report, the movie will include several fun references to the theme park ride that Disney lovers will get a kick out of. One occurs while Jack is his jail cell. There are three prisoners next to him desperately trying to attract the attention of a dog, sitting just out of their reach, that has the keys to the cell clutched in his teeth–that's a scene straight out of the ride.

A $600,000 contract was approved in August 2002 by the Grays Harbor Historical Seaport Authority Board for tall ship Lady Washington to be used in the Disney movie. The Lady will be gone from October 1, 2002 through March 31, 2003 as it travels to Los Angeles and the island of St. Vincent in the southeastern Caribbean for filming.

Animation expert Jim Hill revealed in August 2002 that "in the wake of the disastrous box office performance of The Country Bears movie, the word out of Hollywood is that the Mouse may be having second thoughts about making more movies based on popular Disneyland attractions. In spite of any misgivings that Disney studio execs may now be having about [Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion], Pirates still seems ready to set sail. Production--which was initially supposed to get underway earlier this summer--will now begin in October. Even though no less than four different writers have tried to get the script in shipshape in the past six months, sources deep inside Disney Studios say that the company still expects big things from the film--which will reportedly feature a storyline in which modern tourists find themselves battling with bloodthirsty pirates who are out to undo an ancient curse. However, Mickey and his minions are reportedly already leaning on director Gore Verbinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer to scale back some of the movie’s more expensive-to-shoot sequences."

A fire broke out on the Walt Disney Co.'s studio lot on September 10, 2002, causing $350,000 in damage to a sound stage where a set was under construction for Pirates of the Caribbean. While no one was injured, Disney spokeswoman Michelle Bergman commented thatshooting for Pirates might not be able to proceed on schedule, or have to be moved elsewhere. But she added that Disney does not anticipate the accident will affect the movie's release date, scheduled for summer 2003.

Director Gore Verbinski said in early October that "I start shooting on [October 7]. July 27, 2003 is the release date. It’s not too often you get the opportunity to film a pirate movie. So, I am really excited about that and looking forward to [filming] it."

Writer Terry Rossio revealed in October 2002 that there had been a lot of talk about Johnny Depp's teeth as test footage revealed one of his gold/silver teeth was too dark and created a gap effect, which was since fixed. Comedic characters include Pintel and Ragetti (Ragetti with a wooden eye), and a cursed monkey about which Geoffrey Rush says "Whenever the monkey is on screen, I'm just a large human prop". Three fictional ships are being utilized: the HMS Dauntless (currently under construction in Long Beach), the HMS Interceptor (enroute to the Caribbean), and the Black Pearl (w/ black sails).

The idea of reviving the out-of-favor pirate genre doesn't frighten producer Jerry Bruckheimer. "I like going against the grain. I heard the same thing when we did Top Gun in 1986: 'You can't make an aviator movie.' But you can revisit something and pump fresh life into it."

A first teaser premiered on the movie's official site on Friday December 13, 2002.

Jerry Bruckheimer commented in January 2003: "The pirates--what happens is they stole this cursed treasure and unless they put the treasure back, they never die, they can't enjoy life. They can't enjoy food or sex. All they want to do is plunder and get more and more and more gold. And in the moonlight, they turn into skeletons. So, you can just imagine the effects. ILM is doing the effects. [Director] Gore Verbinski, who did The Ring, is very imaginative and is working with ILM. I've never seen skeletons like this. They have actual features and pieces of flesh and their costumes still on, so it's fascinating."

The project underwent a name change in February 2003 to Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl, to help distinguish between the ride and movie.

Fans of the ride, which has been one of Disneyland's most popular attractions since 1967, may wonder why the song isn't used more than a brief opening scene. Disney's answer is that the film is not "based on" the ride but rather "inspired by" it, and is therefore not required to slavishly follow every aspect of the source material. Xavier Atencio, who co-wrote the song with veteran Disney composer George Bruns (Davy Crockett, Sleeping Beauty), has not yet seen the film. Told that the song is never played in full, he laughed, "I feel left out." Atencio, now 83, started at Disney in 1938 as an apprentice animator on Pinocchio, and eventually storyboarded dozens of Disney TV shows and theme-park rides until his retirement in 1984. According to Atencio, park designers had been at work for a year or more on the Pirates ride before the idea of a song even came up. "One day I got a phone call from Walt, and he said, 'I'd like to have you do the script for Pirates of the Caribbean.' So I said OK, and I put on my pirate hat," Atencio said. "I researched what I could--Treasure Island and stuff like that--to get the feeling and the jargon of pirates. By the time I finished scripting it, I thought, why not a song? I think it was at the final story meeting I had with Walt that I brought it up. I had a rough idea for a lyric and a melody in mind, so I recited and half-sang the 'Yo Ho' song. And Walt said, 'Great, get George [Bruns] to do the music and we'll put it in the show.' " Not being a musician, Atencio expected that Disney would assign Richard and Robert Sherman to write it. They were under contract to the studio, had already penned "It's a Small World" for the park and had won Oscars for Mary Poppins. Instead, Disney gave the job to Atencio and Bruns, "and I became a songwriter overnight," he recalled. Atencio's words ("We pillage and plunder, we rifle and loot / We kidnap and ravage and don't give a hoot") launched a second mini-career. With another Disney composer, Buddy Baker, Atencio went on to co-write "Grim Grinning Ghosts" for the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland and several other songs for Disneyland and Florida's Walt Disney World.

Actor Mackenzie Crook, who plays scurilous pirate Ragetti whose most distinguishing feature is a wooden eyeball, talked about his "comic relief" style role in the Disney flick in a March 2003 interview: "Johnny said he would put in a good word for me--I would like to think that he did. This is a cutlass-in-the-teeth, real swashbuckling adventure. It might be the best showcase for my work. A good comic character is Ragetti, so once again I am playing the idiot. There are lots of visual gags where my eye gets popped out."

Composer Alan Silvestri was fired from the movie due to creative differences. He was in the middle of writing and no music has been recorded. ""It's not settled yet who will take over," Alan-Silvestri.com webmaster Emile Brinkman wrote on May 4, 2003. "Probably one of the Media Ventures composers (also called the Zimmer clones) who always score movies for Bruckheimer." Indeed, Hans Zimmer stepped in as the movie's official composer.

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer promised two things to Disney executives bankrolling the $140-million film: "I'll make the best movie possible and it won't be an R." Instead, Bruckheimer has presented Walt Disney Pictures with its first PG-13-rated movie after the studio's decades-long run of entertainment safe for audiences of all ages. Although there's no sex, drugs or profanity, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is filled with computer-generated scenes of pirates transforming into skeletons as the moonlight melts their flesh. Throats are slit. One youngster who won't be going to the movie, which opens July 9, is the 5-year-old son of Disney production chief Nina Jacobson. "I think it's too intense and scary," she said. Before any filming began, questions began surfacing at Disney's Burbank offices. Based on sketches of the grotesque skeletons, executives worried that the project was moving into the world of PG-13. "We told the filmmakers to try very hard to get the PG," Jacobson said. She said she asked them to "steer clear of things like language, sex and significant amounts of blood that will push us toward a PG-13." But Disney Studios Chairman Dick Cook likened the rating on Pirates to the height restrictions and health warnings that accompany the company's scarier theme park rides in Anaheim and Florida, such as Space Mountain, Tower of Terror and Indiana Jones. With the selection of Bruckheimer to produce the movie, Cook said, "we knew we would be making a thrill ride." Cook also stressed that under no circumstances would Disney Pictures release a movie that included foul language, sex or drug use. "There are no exceptions to those rules," he said. As the production pushed forward, Disney executives saw some of the footage, including a bloody stabbing scene. They flinched but didn't demand that the intense sequences be cut. "You'd lose the guts of the movie," Cook said. "It would be like cutting out the dip on Space Mountain or the Indiana Jones rides." Industry experts see Disney's decision to release a PG-13 movie under its legendary family film banner as recognition of the changing cultural, technological and box-office realities that influence today's action-movie market. "PG-13 is the cool rating," said Paul Dergarabedian, whose company Exhibitor Relations Co. tracks box-office results. "It's the rating that doesn't talk down to teens." Jerry Bruckheimer said that Disney executives "see all these huge movies that are acceptable to parents that are PG-13. They're moving with the marketplace."

Since the release of the hit movie, some fans are now seeing the ride in a new, even sentimental, light. Yet there's no Jack Sparrow in the ride, no Black Pearl, nor is there even a plot. "There's really not a plot thread in the attraction," says Disney spokesman Charles Stovall. "It's not that kind of ride." The moviemakers instead used the ride as a framework for the film, and then laid a storyline on top of it. "This one's a classic and we hope the film version will be as well," says Disney spokesman Rick Sylvain. "The ride is cherished by a lot of people who look forward to seeing it when they visit the park." But if you're looking to chase down movie-related merchandise at Disney World, think again, matey. The gift shop at the end of the ride sells Peter Pan-related pirate merchandise and pirate T-shirts that advertise the theme-park experience, not the movie. "At Walt Disney World, there's no merchandise available that's related to the movie," says Stovall. "It's all related to the attraction." Although some visitors may find the theme-park ride a bit hokey, Disney has no plans to update it. There is a reason, after all, that Pirates of the Caribbean remains a park favorite.

Actor Orlando Bloom said that he was so taken with co-star Johnny Depp's performance that he asked to do an impression of him in the film. "I was like, 'I really want to be doing what you're doing. Maybe I could do an impression or something.' And he was like, 'Yeah, yeah. You should do that.' So it was kind of cool that I got to do that. And I hope Johnny likes it." Bloom, who plays blacksmith Will Turner, said that he learned a lot from Depp, who brought the character of Capt. Jack Swallow to life in a way that wasn't obvious from the script. "I was so envious of what Johnny was doing. But Johnny created that character. That didn't read like that on the page. I mean, that's what Johnny does. That's what's so amazing about him. Jack Sparrow read like a bit of a rogue, but a sort of straight rogue. Do you know what I mean? And Johnny creates this drunken, sea-legged, Keith Richards number." As the lovelorn Turner, Bloom was grateful for the leeway Depp gave him to play the romantic lead earnestly. "Will was written like a straight-shooting, true-blue, honest sort of hero character. Had Johnny played his as more of the hero character, it might have conflicted. But Johnny left it wide open for me just to go the whole hog on the hero number, because the hero element to his is much more character-based. So it kind of left it open for me, which was great. And then I would be like, 'Forget the close-up, just give me a two-shot,' because it was just great to do stuff with him."

Taking 500 people to organize, the six-hour movie premiere in Disneyland California on June 28, 2003 featured go-go dancing pirate girls, a sailing ship with full orchestra and stars arriving to the screening on pirate rafts, and ended with a spectacular fireworks display.

Actor Charles Hambleton revealed in an interview, a few days before the movie's July 9, 2003 opening, that "they appreciated that [me and my brother James] were working really hard and because of that it looks like we have a good chance of being in the movie's sequel that will be filmed in New Orleans." James Hambleton also commented to the paper that he's already seeking a speaking role in the movie's sequel.

The Hollywood Reporter confirmed on July 16, 2003 that the Walt Disney Co. was already talking of setting sail on a sequel to the theme park ride-inspired feature. In anticipation of the film's success, Disney had already made sequel arrangements with such key cast members as Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, as well as with the behind-the-scenes duo of producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski. And the studio has also begun talks with Pirates scribes Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio about drafting a sequel, though no specific story line had yet been set.

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer further revealed in early September 2003 that Pirates of the Caribbean 2 was already in the works. "Yes, we have Johnny Depp already lined up. We just made a deal with the writer who did the re-write of the first Pirates. Let’s hope we can do better than Bad Boys 2. It took me eight years to get that to the screen. We’ll make this much quicker." Disney CEO Michael D. Eisner stated a few days later that the sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean was the last ride-based movie he planned to make.

Variety announced on October 15, 2003 that Gore Verbinski had agreed to direct Pirates of the Caribbean 2, for Walt Disney Pictures and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Writers Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott, who penned the first adventure as well as Shrek, were already working on the sequel's script. Johnny Depp will reprise his starring role in the picture, and Disney had already made sequel arrangements with key cast such as Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, though it is uncertain which other cast members will return. No start date has been set for the follow-up to the film.