Bruckheimer: We wouldn't continue Pirates without Johnny Depp or Geoffrey Rush

‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ producer Jerry Bruckheimer says he wouldn’t make another film in the franchise if Johnny Depp or Geoffrey Rush wanted to stop making them.

Talking to Yahoo Movies while promoting ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge’, the fifth film in the series, the veteran filmmaker said he wouldn’t want to continue without the stars who play Jack Sparrow or Hector Barbossa.

“Anything could happen [in the future of the franchise],” he tells us, “But I wouldn’t want to be around [without Depp or Rush], because they’re wonderful. You wanna hang with those guys.”

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Series newcomer Javier Bardem agrees. He plays the villainous, and supernaturally cursed, Captain Salazar in the new film and he also thinks the franchise would sink without its two recurring leads.

“There would be no franchise without Jack Sparrow – period,” Bardem says.

“And of course Geoffrey is as important as Jack Sparrow himself because he is the counterbalance.”

Along with Depp, and British actor Kevin McNally as Sparrow’s long-suffering first mate Joshamee Gibbs, Geoffrey Rush’s Barbossa is the only character to have appeared in all five Pirates movies. He says there’s a third essential ingredient that holds the ‘Pirates’ franchise together – The Black Pearl, Sparrow’s ship.

“If Jack was still captain of the Black Pearl there’d be no story to tell,” Rush explains, “He’d be a very happy existential hero and in charge of his own destiny of leading his own life.”

“But the fact that Barbossa mutinied and took [the ship]… we always think of the Black Pearl as like the mutual girlfriend. It’s ‘Jules et Jim’, we’re fighting over the one girl, and that’s been the major squabble, the barometer of the narrative is always based on that.”

‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge’ is in cinemas now. Watch a trailer below.

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