‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ producer would bring back Johnny Depp 'If it were up to me'

Pirates of the Caribbeanproducer Jerry Bruckheimer has admitted he would personally like to see Johnny Depp return to the Disney franchise.

The last film in the franchise was 2017's Dead Men Tell No Tales where we last saw Depp play Captain Jack Sparrow, and there have been question marks over whether he would reprise the role.

At the box office, the first three films saw success, while the last two instalments didn't measure up but despite this Bruckheimer teased the reboot back in March.

In a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, the producer revealed he's working with writer Jeff Nathanson who wrote the screenplay for Dead Men Tell No Tales.

As the new film is a reboot, the next movie wouldn’t follow the characters we all know from the franchise, so a possible appearance from Jack Sparrow is probably off the cards.

Though Bruckheimer has expressed he would welcome Depp back.

“It’s a reboot, but if it was up to me, he would be in it,” Bruckheimer told the publication.

“I love him. He’s a good friend. He’s an amazing artist and he’s a unique look. He created Captain Jack. That was not on the page, that was him doing a little Pepé Le Pew and Keith Richards. That was his interpretation of Jack Sparrow.”

However, Depp's relationship with Disney reportedly turned sour during his divorce from ex-wife Amber Heard, leading to a very public defamation trial in 2022.

The jury awarded Depp $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages over a 2018 opinion-editorial essay in The Washington Post, in which Heard said she had become a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”

But in July last year, a source close to the actor told PEOPLEhe could return to the Disney franchise: "Anything is possible. If it’s the right project, he’ll do it.”

Elsewhere, there were reports of another revival of the franchise led by Margot Robbie but she told Vanity Fair in November 2022 that it had been scrapped.

“We had an idea and we were developing it for a while, ages ago, to have more of a female-led — not totally female-led, but just a different kind of story — which we thought would’ve been really cool,” Robbie explained. “But I guess they [Disney] don’t want to do it.”

Although Bruckheimer reckons both movies could be made.

“It’s two different movies,” he recently told Entertainment Tonight. “We hope to get ’em both made, and I think Disney agrees they really want to make the Margot one, too."

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