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Jerry Bruckheimer Says The Fate Of The Pirates Of The Caribbean Series Lies In The Home Release

Published Mon, 04 Sep 2017 14:13:07 -0500

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales came out this summer, and the reception was underwhelming. It did fine the week it came out, but the following Friday Wonder Woman came out and everyone seemed to forget about it. The movie did well overseas, but not nearly as well as Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. But Jerry Bruckheimer seems happy with the numbers in an interview with Yahoo Movies, even while adding a few caveats to his statements:

"I think it did phenomenal. I mean, you're talking about the fifth [film] in the series in a down market, and the American dollar is so strong that we're getting less returns from foreign."

It's never a good idea to say that your movie did well while turning around and saying, in the same breath, that it didn't do amazing because the market is down. Bruckheimer continued:

"This movie would've [made] a billion dollars had it been back in the same financial [situation as On Stranger Tides]. But we lost 27 percent of our money just by the conversion rate."

It's also the conversion rate! Now he just needs to blame the media:

"The media likes to run with the reviews and we didn't get great reviews, so they like to say it didn't do well. But god it's at what, $790 [million] now? It's amazing."

This entire thing comes to a fundamental problem in the blockbuster market right now; no one is happy just making money anymore. If they aren't shattering box office records and making all of the money then that isn't enough. Pirates 5 did fine — it made $795 million at the worldwide box office, so there is no reason they shouldn't greenlight another one. It didn't make all the money, though, so now the series hangs in the balance. Bruckheimer said:

"Well, I hope we can continue to make it, but you know we've been having so much fun just promoting this one right now that we'll just have to wait and see. Hopefully it's very successful on DVD as the other ones have been. Then hopefully we'll sit down and see where we go."

There is no middle ground for media anymore. No one is happy pitching themselves to smaller but devoted fanbases or keeping their budgets reasonable so that fanbase is enough to keep the lights on. It's all or nothing, and we're going to see plenty of franchises and new IPs die because they only made some money.

Summary: Captain Jack Sparrow searches for the trident of Poseidon while being pursued by an undead sea captain and his crew.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, directed by Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, stars Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Javier Bardem, Brenton Thwaites, and Kaya Scodelario. It will be available digitally on September 19th and on Blu-ray/DVD/on demand on October 3rd.

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