Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer dropped an update on his biggest franchise during a keynote at TheWrap’s TheGrill 2025 conference.
Right out of the gate, Bruckheimer confirmed that a sixth “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie is still very much in the works. “We’re working on a script,” he told moderator Drew Taylor, stressing that the project won’t move forward until the team is satisfied with what’s on the page. “If we don’t have it on the page, it’s not gonna get on the screen.”
Bruckheimer revealed that Disney had previously developed two competing versions of ‘Pirates 6,’ but only one has survived. Interestingly, he also clarified that Margot Robbie, who was once rumored to lead a scrapped spinoff, remains attached to the franchise in some capacity.
“She’s still involved,” he confirmed. Franchise veteran Ted Elliott has already contributed to the screenplay, with additional writers now filling in the gaps.
Last month, Bruckheimer — long a champion of Johnny Depp’s return to “Pirates of the Caribbean” — told EW that the actor was open to reprising the role for a sixth film, provided he liked the script.
Initially, there were two different “Pirates” movies in development: one was a Margot Robbie–led reboot with an entirely new cast, and the other featured returning cast members (including Depp and Orlando Bloom) with connections to the earlier films.
One of those projects was most likely co-written by “The Last of Us” creator Craig Mazin and original “Pirates” scribe Ted Elliott, before later being rewritten by Jeff Nathanson (“The Young Woman and the Sea”).
The “Pirates” franchise has felt dead to many fans, especially after the last installment, 2017’s “Dead Men Tell No Tales.” As far as I’m concerned, the only truly great one was the 2003 original. However, money talks, and in Hollywood reboots are greenlit on a near-weekly basis.