Margot Robbie just revealed that her long-awaited Pirates of the Caribbean movie has been canceled. The actress was supposed to star in a spinoff film separate from the main series continuity, but this week she told Vanity Fair that the whole idea has been scrapped. Robbie hinted that it was Disney’s decision to drop the project.
Robbie is on the cover of the December issue of Vanity Fair, with a profile by Rebecca Ford published on Monday. Amid the other news she teased in the interview, she very casually revealed that she will not be playing a pirate after all. When asked about the movie, she said: “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, but I guess they [Disney] don’t want to do it.”
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Robbie’s perspective Pirates spinoff was announced in June of 2020 by The Hollywood Reporter. It came shortly after the successful premiere of Birds of Prey, and it would have reunited Robbie with that movie’s screenwriter, Christina Hodson. The only other talent attached to the movie was producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
All fans really knew of this project was that it would have been separate from the rest of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, including the impending sixth installment. It would not have included Jack Sparrow and perhaps not any of the franchise’s existing characters, but it would have had a female lead in one way or another.
Pirates of the Caribbean was one of the biggest franchises of the early aughts and fans still wonder why it was allowed to fizzle out so slowly. The first movie premiered in 2003 followed closely by sequels in 2006 and 2007. The fourth movie came in 2011 but the fifth did not premiere until 2017. The sixth movie was announced way back in 2011, but it has been repeatedly pushed back.
Part of that delay likely has to do with the publicity downfall of star Johnny Depp, who later claimed he was effectively fired from the franchise. Disney has not commented officially on that claim, but in recent years there have been some promising hints about Pirates 6 without any mention of Depp one way or the other.
As for Robbie, she has plenty of other highly-anticipated projects to keep her busy – including the live-action Barbie movie due out in theaters on July 21, 2023. The existing Pirates of the Caribbean films are available to stream now on Disney+.
