Will There Be More 'Pirates Of The Caribbean' Movies After 'Dead Men Tell No Tales'?
This past summer, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales came and went without much pomp and circumstance. The sequel only has 30% at Rotten Tomatoes, and while it has a 4.7 rating from critics (which is the more important number at the review aggregator website), that's still not a warm reception. So will we be seeing any more Pirates of the Caribbean movies?
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer is putting a positive spin on the box office for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, which performed nearly $70 million under the last film at the domestic box office, and the fourth film was already $68 million behind the previous sequel. But despite his upbeat attitude about the sequel's performance, it sounds like Walt Disney Pictures will have to wait to see how Dead Men Tell No Tales does on home video before they proceed with a new adventure.
In an interview with Yahoo Movies, Jerry Bruckheimer couldn't stop putting a positive spin on the film's performance at the box office, blaming the lower performance at the international box office on the conversion rate between American and foreign currency:
"I think it did phenomenal. I mean, you're talking about the fifth [film] in the series in a down market, and the American dollar is so strong that we're getting less returns from foreign. This movie would've [made] a billion dollars had it been back in the same financial [situation as On Stranger Tides]. But we lost 27 percent of our money just by the conversion rate."
Even if the economic situation was different, it doesn't change the fact that audiences, even the most loyal fans, are starting to grow tired of the antics of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. But Bruckheimer places the blame of that perception on the media:
"The media likes to run with the reviews and we didn't get great reviews, so they like to say it didn't do well. But god it's at what, $790 [million] now? It's amazing."
Sure, $790 million is a great number, but that's $253 million less than Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which was the worst in the franchise as far as quality goes. So even with Dead Men Tell No Tales being a better movie, it still couldn't drum up the same amount of interest. Even if we consider the poor conversion rate in currency, there's still a big difference between the box office performance of these sequels.
But despite Bruckheimer's defense of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, it appears that's not enough to be confident that we'll be seeing another high seas adventure with Captain Jack Sparrow. When asked if there will be a Pirates of the Caribbean 6, Bruckheimer said:
"I hope we can continue to make it, but you know we've been having so much fun just promoting this one right now that we'll just have to wait and see. Hopefully it's very successful on DVD as the other ones have been. Then hopefully we'll sit down and see where we go."
Even though Jerry Bruckheimer paints a positive portrait of Pirates of the Caribbean, Disney still needs to see where the chips fall when it comes to their earnings. The movie cost $230 million to make, and that's not including the marketing. We're not sure how much they have to make to warrant a follow-up, but thanks to the post-credits scene at the end, we have an idea of where the franchise will go next. We'll just have to wait and see what happens with the home video release.
Pirates of the Caribbean:Dead Men Tell No Tales hits digital download on September 19 and on Blu-ray & DVD on October 3.