In the upcoming Entertainment Weekly the headline reads “How to Build a Better Pirate.” Johnny Depp (as Jack Sparrow) is on the cover and the actor gives a cover story interview with the magazine.
While it can be debated if the notoriety he’s received as an actor is more because of the caricatures he’s played – rather than characters – in films past, even Depp knows that his trusty audience demands more.
So before he decided to set sail on a fourth installment, which saw the pirate collect between $32 to $35 million worth of booty, he said that “more than anything we owed the audience a fresh start, without all the complicated mathematics of 1 colliding with 2 and 2 colliding with 3.”
As for the sequels that occurred after The Curse of the Black Pearl, Depp says that “they had to invent a trilogy out of nowhere.” Jack Sparrow may have been the biggest highlight but you had these ongoing stories with Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly and other supporting characters that the plot became too “complicated.”
Depp recounts a discussion he had with director Gore Verbinski, who directed him in the first three Pirates films and this year’s Rango, and saying: “‘I don’t really know what this means.’ He said, ‘Neither do I, but let’s just shoot it.’ This guy is this guy’s dad, and this guy was in love with this broad. It was like, ‘What?'”
You can read he entire cover story interview when the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly hits stands on May 6.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides opens nationwide on May 20, 2011.