It seems Margot Robbie best start believin’ in ghost stories, as the star of Disney’s previously announced gender-swapped entry into the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has confirmed that the project has officially been scrapped to the depths of Davy Jones’ locker.
The two-time Suicide Squad actress revealed the sinking of her spin-off’s ship during an interview given to Vanity Fair for the publication’s Dec 2022/Jan 2023 cover story.
Speaking to her upcoming career plans, which include Barbie and a prequel to 2001’s Ocean’s Eleven, the actress admitted to the outlet’s Senior Awards Correspondent Rebecca Ford that the Pirates project was no longer a part of her schedule.
“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,” recalled Robbie, “but I guess they don’t want to do it.”
First announced as in production in June 2020, the now-dead film would have seen Birds of Prey scribe Christina Hodson tell a brand new story completely unrelated to either the original series or its iconic protagonist, Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow.
Details regarding the project’s development were kept tight-lipped, but what is known is that, as previously detailed by Robbie herself, the film would have featured “a lot of girl power”.
“We’re really, really excited at the prospect of kind of adding a very key female element to that world,” the star told Collider in a since-deleted interview with the outlet given in November 2020.
Though Robbie’s female-led Pirates project has had its sails shredded before they could even unfurl, this is not the end of Disney’s supposed plans for the the franchise’s overall future.
Earlier this year, franchise producer Bruckheimer confirmed to UK news outlet The Times that he was “developing two Pirates scripts – one with [Robbie], one without her.”
This second Pirates film, should it ever be developed, is set to be penned by Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin and longtime franchise writer Ted Elliot and will ostensibly be the sixth proper entry into the series.
However, should this sixth film ever get off the ground, it will very likely not see a return of Depp to the role of Captain Sparrow.
After being let go by Disney over the allegations of abuse leveled against him by his ex-wife Amber Heard, Depp declared during the proceedings of the subsequent defamation lawsuit he filed and won against her that he would never debase himself by voluntarily appearing in any future Pirates media.
Asked by Amber Heard’s lawyer Ben Rottenborn, “if Disney came to you with $300 million and a million alpacas nothing on this earth would get you to go back and work with Disney on a Pirates of the Caribbean film?”, Depp explicitly affirmed, “That is true, Mr. Rottenborn.”
