Jerry Bruckheimer; ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides’

Kate Green/Getty Images for Lionsgate; Everett Collection

Jerry Bruckheimer revealed that the next installment of Pirates of the Caribbean will be a reboot of the beloved franchise.

The legendary producer said in a recent interview with ComicBook.com that they’re working on a Pirates of the Caribbean sequel as well as Top Gun 3, but noted that the latter is going to take longer to develop since it involves coordinating schedules with several A-list actors, such as Tom Cruise, Miles Teller and Glen Powell.

“You don’t know how they come together. You just don’t know,” Bruckheimer said. “Because with Top Gun you have an actor who is iconic and brilliant. And how many movies he does before he does Top Gun, I can’t tell you. But we’re gonna reboot Pirates, so that is easier to put together because you don’t have to wait for certain actors.”

Disney seemingly starting from scratch with Pirates may come as a surprise to some fans, as there have already been ideas swirling in recent years about the franchise’s future — some that involve Margot Robbie and others that see Johnny Depp returning.

Bruckheimer previously told The Hollywood Reporter in 2022 that they were “getting very close” with Pirates 6 and even had a “very good script.”

“We developed two of them — the one with Margot Robbie and one with a younger cast,” he said at the time. “The Margot Robbie one needs a little more work. The younger cast one is close. Hopefully we’ll get both of them.”

The producer also shut down Robbie’s claims that the project wasn’t happening, saying, “We believe we’ll get it made. It’s a very strong story.”

Elsewhere in the interview with THR, Bruckheimer added he “would love to have” Depp in another movie.

However, it appears the next Pirates project to hit the big screen will likely feature an all-new cast. The Last of Us creator Craig Mazin, who worked on the new story with screenwriter Ted Elliot, told the Los Angeles Times last year that he was surprised Disney liked their script because it was “too weird.”

“We pitched it and thought there’s no way they’re buying it, it’s too weird. And they did! And then we wrote a fantastic script and the strike happened and everyone’s waiting around,” Mazin explained at the time.

The last Pirates of the Caribbean movie to hit the big screen was in 2017 — Dead Men Tell No Tales — and it starred Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem and Kaya Scodelario.