Margot Robbie says female-led Pirates of the Caribbean movie is dead in the water
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"Dead in the water" is, sadly, not the title of Margot Robbie's upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean movie — it's the status.
The Birds of Prey and Barbie actress has been attached to a more female-focused film in the fantasy-adventure franchise since 2020, but Robbie now says the pic is not moving forward at Disney.
"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 — which we thought would've been really cool, but I guess they don't want to do it," Robbie tells Vanity Fair in a new cover story.
A spokesperson for Disney did not immediately respond to EW's request for comment.
Screenwriter Christina Hodson, who worked on Birds of Prey, was set to write the new Pirates movie, EW had earlier confirmed. The idea wasn't to do a formal spin-off but rather a separate origin story with new characters. This would've been completely different than the long-in-development reboot of the franchise that was first reported back in 2019.
Kate Green/Getty Images; Disney Margot Robbie's 'Pirates of the Caribbean' movie is not moving forward, she says.
Orlando Bloom's Will Turner, Keira Knightley's Elizabeth Swann, and Johnny Depp's (Captain!) Jack Sparrow were the central focus of the first three movies — 2003's Pirates of the Caribbean, 2006's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, and 2007's Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.
Depp returned with Geoffrey Rush's Hector Barbossa for 2011's Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which added Penélope Cruz's Angelica and Ian McShane's Edward Teach. In 2017, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales reunited Bloom and Knightley while introducing even more new characters.
The future of the franchise is unclear at this point. During the defamation trial between Depp and ex-wife Amber Heard, Depp testified that Disney cut ties with him after Heard published her 2018 Washington Post op-ed in which she described herself as a victim of domestic abuse, though she didn't mention Depp by name.
Depp denies Heard's allegations of abuse. A jury sided with the actor in the defamation trial, determining that Heard intentionally and maliciously defamed him with the op-ed. Heard won a counterclaim that stated Depp defamed her through his lawyer by calling her abuse accusations a "hoax" in the press, insinuating that her friends had set up Depp.
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