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Comment RSSPirates Of The Caribbean 4 - Johnny Depp To Get $75m?
7.10.08 # 4:44 # Sequel # 10 Comments
Reports are starting to emerge that should Johnny Depp decide to reprise his role as captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates Of The Caribbean 4 (something that is looking fairly likely as of writing) then Disney would be willing to pay him 32 million pounds (roughly $75 million) upfront for the performance. This would be the largest up front payment an actor has ever received for anything ever.
A source said:
“It’s a hell of a lot of money for one movie but there’s only one man who can play Captain Jack Sparrow - and that’s Johnny Depp.
Pirates just wouldn’t be the same without him, so they were more than willing to smash the record books to land Depp again. He’s been the star of the show every time.”
This report raises a few issues in my mind;
1) Is Depp (or any actor) worth $75 million?
Few would argue that Johnny Depp is one of the better actors working today, but is it really worth that kind of money? Would a new ‘pirates’ film make $75 million less if Depp was not involved? Personally I think the next ‘pirates’ film will be an absolute juggernaut regardless of Depp’s involvement. They say no-one else can play the role but new actors have successfully replaced others in the past.
2) Has the franchise run its course?
Personally, I loved the original ‘pirates’ film, it was a surprisingly endearing film that succeeded mostly through word of mouth. Pirates 2 however had to live up to the success of the first film and fell far short of that feat, and the less said about the mess that was pirates 3 the better. So the question is; does anyone want to see a fourth movie? News that Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley are unlikely to appear give me hope, but not enough to hand over my hard-earned money.
3) Is the money better spent elsewhere?
One of the main problems with the second and third pirates films were that the story and script were all over the place. Surely you could hire a brilliant screenwriter for a fraction of the $75 million who could potentially increase the profit on the film more than hiring Depp.
4) Will Depp bring his A-game?
Huge paychecks like this are most common in Hollywood when a studio is desperate to snag an actor or actress who does not want to be snagged for some reason. If they’re having to offer Depp this ridiculous sum to make him consider coming back, I doubt he’s going to bring his full passion to the role, it seems like he’s moved on and Disney are trying desperately to not let him go.
Ultimately I think Depp’s involvement in the franchise is irrelevant. I think that Disney are going to keep pumping out sequel after sequel, of ever decreasing quality, until they stop making money, at which point they will find another dead horse to flog.
Source: Monsters And Critics
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Given the amount these movies make, we’re talking literally billions here, $75m is not unreasonable. Why rock the boat (whay) by getting rid of the star, with him there it’s an absolute dead cert at the box office, nobody involved will lose out.
I can’t believe they are actually considering paying this much to an actor. Yeah, it won’t be Pirates without him. But this sets a whole new precedent when, ironically, most salaries for the stars headlining a film are too inflated anyways.
It’s not like the cash Pirates 4 makes is going to be spent on schools or anything. If it didn’t go to the actor, it would just be going into producers’ pockets. They’re already hiring pretty much the most expensive screenwriters around (Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio), and have one of the top special fx houses working for them. Are the producers more deserving of the money? Did the producers create the most iconic movie character of the 21st century? Depp did. It’s well documented how he turned the script on its head when they filmed the first one and put on an act that had them all worried. This is his baby.
Pirates Of The Caribbean 4: The Search For The Narrative.
Why don’t they take their $75m and build a new theme park ride, maybe based on ninjas, and then make a new film based on that ride, say, Ninjas Of The Orient, starring Guy Pearce as a loveable rogue ninja who bears a surprising similarity to Mick Jagger, get, say, Paul WS Anderson to direct it, make a couple hundred million dollars and two terrible sequels, then use the money from those films to make another theme park ride, based on surfer-cowboys-from-the-future, then make a film based on that, called Surfer-Cowboys-From-The-Future Of The Balkans, get Shia LaBeouf to star as a loveable rogue surfer-cowboy-from-the-future who bears a surprising similarity to Dee Dee Ramone, make two terrible sequels, and after that they can have rest.
i want johnny depp to be in the pirates of the caribbean 4 for defo he plays the bestest part as captain jack sparrow,nobody will replace is role,hes the best ever.xx
Face it, it’s Johnny Depp, arguably the best out there, Hell, I think it’s worth it, without him, it’s pointless, let’s just hope he puts 100% into it.
i know the whole pirates series is based on Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow, but if he doesnt want to do it again, they can just change the whole story for the fourth movie and have someone as his brother replacing his character, and someone that would play that part would be that British actor from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. He has the same look.
There should definitely be a PotC 4. $75 mil is a lot, but everyone, just be glad Disney isn’t dropping everyone else in favour of a movie based on the monkey.
Whomever wrote this is not a very observant person. Disney is freakishly smart about how much of something they do or actually, anything they do! They never ”flog” dead horses and they certainly know when to stop something. I understand that having seventeen air bud movies seems like flogging, or even beating for that matter, but it’s not. They don’t release them into the box office which means they’re very low budget to the point where once they sell a weekends worth at wal-mart they’ve made more money than Michael Phelps could swim out of. So to say they flog ideas is just ridiculous. Now, the big question is, Is jack Sparrow bigger than Pirates of the Caribbean. That simple. They wouldn’t re-cast it and they certainly wouldn’t continue the series without Jack Sparrow. The only option they would really have is to do a prequel. Early Jack Sparrow, which could possible be done by someone other than Depp, although it would be HARD!
Forget Johnny Depp and forget the new Pirates movie, $75,000000 is a disgusting amount to be wasted on one person no matter how talented they are! If they donated that amount to kids starving in Africa then this world would be a much better place! Oh!