You knew that it was coming...
When something is as successful as the Pirates franchise, a film studio isn't going to let it die. And as long as they can make interesting stories into films I don't really mind. That means that "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" offers a bit of an obstacle. If we judge by the good story standard then that film should put a bullet in the tale of these pirates for eternity. It was bad. It was boring, it was bland, and felt like a relative that had stayed too long after the clock struck twelve on New Year's Eve.
I didn't think it was a great continuation of the Jack Sparrow character, and it was a waste of a villain as deliciously evil as should have been Blackbeard played by Ian McShane. And Rob Marshall should not have been the director, nor should he be the one behind the camera in any future Pirate films. He was simply the wrong man for the job, unless Walt Disney Pictures planned on making the film a musical, which they weren't.
So today we find out that the Mouse has hired a new screenwriter to take over from Terry Rossio and craft a new story with a fresh take. For those of you that haven't heard, Variety is reporting that Jeff Nathanson has been hired to be that writer. I don't know what to think yet about this because Nathanson has done some great work (Catch Me If You Can), but he's also did a lot of mediocre work (Rush Hour 2), and even some bad work (Speed 2, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull).
Now, time will tell if the drafts that made it up on the silver screen were actually his, or the result of a Frankenstein-like script process where many authors put in a clueless collection of their own words. Sometimes the person to blame for something bad belongs to one man/woman, and sometimes the blame should be spread around. When we see the results of his work on this we can then make a better judgement.
I'm hearing that Suits in Burbank want to do a Mission Impossible thing and bring in someone that can take over the franchise when Depp no longer wants to, or is just too old to be plundering. The same way Jeremy Renner came into "Ghost Protocal" to be there for Tom Cruise to hand off the series once he's done. Maybe that's why Nathanson was hired: to prepare for that day. We'll know more as the year moves forward, but right now all we have is the name.
We'll have to wait till we see more of the map toward this new treasure...
