Johnny Depp in talks to return to Pirates of the Caribbean franchise

Johnny Depp is in talks to return as Captain Jack Sparrow in a sixth Pirates of the Caribbean film, according to the producer of the series, Jerry Bruckheimer. Bruckheimer told Deadline: “We’re talking with Johnny, we’re working on a screenplay, and hopefully we can get this done.” This is despite the actor having said under oath in 2022, during the notorious televised trial of the defamation case he brought against his ex-wife, Amber Heard, that Disney had dropped him from the series and he would not play Sparrow again even if he were offered “$300m and a million alpacas”.

Depp first appeared as the charismatic, roguish, rum-swilling Captain Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl in 2003, and it has become his most recognisable – and profitable – role. Taking its name and golden age of piracy setting from a ride at the Disney World theme park, the swashbuckling adventure also featured Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom and Geoffrey Rush, and grossed more than $650m (£480m) at the worldwide box office.

Four sequels followed between 2006 and 2017, and it was the first franchise to produce two films that each made more than $1bn. The series has made more than $4.5bn in total. The most recent entry, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, was released in 2017. Although reviews were not especially positive, it grossed almost $800m.

However, Depp has had well-publicised legal issues since then, which have affected his career. The defamation trial against Heard in the US was preceded in 2020 by a libel lawsuit he brought in the UK after the Sun newspaper characterised him as a “wife-beater”; the court found the characterisation was “substantially true”. After this verdict, Depp was asked by Warner Bros to resign from the Fantastic Beasts franchise, when shooting on a third film had already begun.

The jury in the 2022 trial ruled in Depp’s favour, finding that Heard had defamed her ex-husband in a Washington Post editorial in which she said she “became a public figure representing domestic abuse”.

Depp subsequently played Louis XV in the 2023 French-language historical drama Jeanne du Barry, and voiced a puffin in the feature-length animation Johnny Puff: Secret Mission in 2024. But whether audiences will welcome him making a comeback as a major film star may be determined when he plays Scrooge in Ebenezer, directed by Ti West, due to be released in the UK and US in November.