Disney Exec Is ‘Noncommittal At This Point’ About Johnny Depp Returning To ‘Pirates’ Franchise

etcanada.com:

The return of Jack Sparrow isn’t out of the question. In a New York Times interview, Disney president of production Sean Bailey didn’t rule out the possibility of bringing Johnny Depp back to the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series. READ MORE: Johnny Depp On His Cannes Return And Finding ‘The Basement To The Bottom’ Though plans for a new “Pirates” film have been not been officially announced, the studio has been hard at work for the last several years trying to restart the franchise. “We think we have a really good, exciting story that honours the films that have come before but also has something new to say,” Bailey teased.

But many have wondered whether Depp would be returning, following the controversy surrounding his alleged abuse of ex-wife Amber Heard and their defamation trial last year.

Asked whether fans could expect Depp to come back as Captain Jack Sparrow, Bailey responded, “Noncommittal at this point.” During Depp’s trial against Heard, the actor’s manager claimed that around 2016, Bailey and producer Jerry Bruckheimer had verbally agreed to pay the actor $22.5 million to appear in a sixth film in the franchise. READ MORE: After Cannes Appearance, Johnny Depp Celebrates $20 Million Dior Deal At Dinner Party In 2018, following the publication of an op-ed by Heard in The Washington Post, Disney hired new writers to work on a reboot of the franchise, with Bailey suggesting Depp would not be involved. “We want to bring in a new energy and vitality,” he said at the time in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

But during the trial, Depp’s manager clarified that Disney had been “noncommittal” about the actor returning for a sixth film even before Heard’s op-ed was published in December 2018. “It was