‘Pirates 6’ Will Be ‘More of an Ensemble,’ but Jerry Bruckheimer Says Margot Robbie’s Spinoff Isn’t Dead

Development continues on “Pirates of the Caribbean 6,” but in the wake of Margot Robbie claiming that her spinoff of the Disney franchise is dead, producer Jerry Bruckheimer says her film could very well still happen – it just won’t be the next “Pirates” movie.

“Well hopefully we’ll get another Pirates movie made,” Bruckheimer told TheWrap during a recent interview tied to the upcoming “National Treasure” Disney+ series. “We developed two scripts at once and the Margot Robbie script was a little further away, but we’ll get that made down the line too and focus on more of an ensemble ‘Pirates’ movie at this point.”

Robbie began developing a new “Pirates” movie in 2020 with her “Birds of Prey” writer Christina Hodson, but earlier this month Robbie told Vanity Fair that the project was no longer happening.

“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,” she said.

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According to Bruckheimer, however, Robbie’s project is still in the hopper but they’re currently focused on making a different “Pirates” film first. In 2018, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Bruckheimer and Disney were looking for ways to reboot the franchise, and while “Deadpool” screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick came aboard to write a new entry, they departed the project in 2019.

Disney did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.

It’s unclear if this “ensemble” film is a sequel or a reboot, but franchise stalwart Johnny Depp said in the midst of his trial with Amber Heard earlier this year that he would not return after being booted from a potential “Pirates 6” in 2019 over Heard’s domestic violence accusations.

After the surprisingly successful launch of “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” in 2003, Disney doubled down on the franchise with four more sequels. The most recent installment, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales,” was released in 2017 but “underperformed” relative to previous installments of the franchise — it grossed $794 million worldwide compared to the $1 billion of 2011’s “On Stranger Tides.”

Bruckheimer is producing the Disney+ series “National Treasure: Edge of History” and is coming off of producing the year’s most successful film so far, “Top Gun: Maverick.”

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