“This project was charmed from the beginning,” says Mike Stenson. “Ted and Terry are the absolute masters of this type of storytelling, and it turned out they had always wanted to do the feature version of ‘Pirates.’ They even sang the theme song the first time we met.”
Elliott and Rossio will tell you that timing is everything. They pitched an idea for a pirate movie almost ten years earlier after completing work on “Aladdin,” but there was no interest from any studio. Undeterred, the writing team refused to give up the dream, keeping their concept on a back burner, convinced that the combination of romance, adventure and mystery would one day become popular again.
Actor Johnny Depp was unhesitatingly confident that the writing duo could handle the job and make a childhood dream come true. “Isn’t it every boy’s dream to be a pirate and get away with basically anything?” Depp asks rhetorically. “Who wouldn want to play a pirate?”
It wasn’t purely boyish exuberance that factored into Depp’s decision to accept the role of Captain Jack Sparrow; he was wholeheartedly confident in the quality of the project when he learned of Elliott and Rossio’s participation. “The second I heard that Ted and Terry were writing the script, I knew we were in good shape,” Depp says. “With Jerry’s background and Gore’s intense focus, I knew the film had strong shoulders to stand on. When I read Ted and Terry’s screenplay, I was pleasantly surprised; they’d exceeded my expectations. They brought a great amount of humor to the story and created building blocks for the actors to elaborate, to really stretch the character.”
With a script in place, Bruckheimer was now on the hunt for a director. “My agent called and said, ‘How do you feel about a pirate movie?’ I mean, how often are you going to get that call?,” recalls Gore Verbinski, who most recently directed “The Ring.”
Bruckheimer had attempted to hire Verbinski several years earlier, but schedules would not allow. “I had met him early on in his career and thought he was very talented after seeing his commercial reel,” says the producer. “But somebody got to him before I could and he went off to make ‘Mouse Hunt.’”
“We talked quite a bit over the last few years about trying to find a project to work on together,” adds Verbinski. “I am thoroughly entertained by his films. I am there with the popcorn, getting my money’s worth every time I go to a Jerry Bruckheimer picture.”
“We were lucky to sign Gore right before ‘The Ring’ came out,” comments Bruckheimer. “This film is perfect for him because we encouraged him to use his wonderful sense of humor and his great storytelling skills. And because it has elements of the supernatural, Gore got to use lots of visual effects. His enthusiasm is like a little kid’s. He loves to work with actors, and actors love him. We were fortunate because he really was the perfect director for this project.”
Mike Stenson echoes Bruckheimer’s praise. “Gore’s combination of visual style, technical expertise and humor made him our first and only choice as a director. He said yes the first meeting as well.”
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