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Say what you will about Gore Verbinski's "Pirates of the Caribbean" trilogy, but one cannot accuse the director of phoning things in. The first of the "Pirates" films, "The Curse of the Black Pearl" in 2003, was a grand ol' time, deftly wedding an old-school swashbuckler with elements from the famed Disney theme park ride and a wry sense of wit provided by "Aladdin" and "Shrek" co-writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. Over 654 million later, Elliott, Rossio, and Verbinski reunited to shoot a pair of back-to-back sequels in the hopes of bottling lightning two more times. The results, put plainly, are a lot, but again, the opposite of phoning things in.

Of the two "Pirates of the Caribbean" sequels, it's 2006's "Dead Man's Chest" that presented some of the biggest technical challenges. The movie features two of the more inspired set pieces in the entire franchise, both of which involve...

The argument could be made that the world really doesn’t need another Pirates of the Caribbean movie, but when the franchise has earned over $4.5 billion at the box office and rests in the hands of our pop culture overlords at Disney, there was little chance of the Black Pearl being allowed to sail off into the sunset.

Fifth installment Dead Men Tell No Tales may have been the lowest-grossing entry since the original back in 2003, but a $795 million global total is hardly small change, and the Mouse House are keen to keep milking their swashbuckling cash cow for all that it’s worth. Chernobyl co-creator Craig Mazin is currently writing the script for the new film alongside Pirates veteran Ted Elliott, but little is known about the creative direction for the sixth high-seas adventure besides the desire to cast a female star in the lead.

Disney certainly upset a...

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, the fifth installment in Disney’s swashbuckling franchise, became the lowest-earning entry in the series since the original when it was released in 2017, which was perhaps a sign that audiences weren’t as interested in the adventures of Jack Sparrow as they had been for the last decade and a half. However, a box office haul of almost $800m showed that the brand was still capable of turning a profit.

Since Disney now seemingly dominates every corner of popular culture, and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has grossed over $4.5bn at the box office to date, there was little chance that the crew of the Black Pearl would ever really disappear from our screens. In fact, a reboot has been discussed for a while now, which may or may not feature Johnny Depp, but seemed to be in a state...

After 15 years, it’s almost too easy to forget that not many people were optimistic about the release of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl back in 2003. At best, it seemed as if it would coast by on curiosity around how Disney could turn one of their most beloved theme park rides into a full-blown film, and instead it surprised everyone by being an absolute blast.

It scratched an itch for the type of swashbuckling adventures that simply didn’t exist on the big screen anymore by then, fueled by a compelling story, fun action set pieces and a whole handful of great characters – the standout, of course, being Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow, a performance that famously worried and angered Disney executives during production only to prove them all wrong by immediately breaking into the pop culture zeitgeist.

Thanks to the surprise success of Black Pearl,...