‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ Downsizing, on Tighter Budget

“Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” will be a different kettle of fish than the previous three installments in the franchise. Not only will it include new cast members, but it will also be subject to budget limitations, which was never the case with the other films in the series. “Pirates 4” will be cost effective and this will also be noticeable in its story, Empire Online informs.

“At World’s End,” for instance, boasted a mind-blowing budget of $300 million and, even if it still made a killing at the box office, its cost was still more than what Disney initially planned for it. It was mostly director Gore Verbinski that pushed for this amount because he wanted special effects and action scenes to be over the top. As the Disney’s new chairman Rich Ros sees it, this did not necessarily add more quality to the film – so the fourth one can very well do without them.

On the downside, a new, tighter budget also means that the cast will spend most of the film on land and that scenes on water will be filmed on new locations. “Poor Rob Marshall will only have a couple of hundred million bucks to play with on Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, compared to the $300m that Gore Verbinski had to throw at the last installment. It’s all part of a scaling back, under Disney’s new chairman Rich Ross, designed to protect that all important bottom line. The LA Times blames increasing marketing costs and deteriorating DVD revenues. Ross ‘wants to be mean and lean and cost effective,’ says producer Jerry Bruckheimer,” Empire writes.

“This has meant screenwriters Ted Eliott and Terry Rossio facing the dictat to keep Johnny Depp and co on land as much as possible. Filming is taking place in Hawaii and London (rather than LA and the Caribbean) for the tax incentives. The shoot will be fifty days shorter than At Worlds End, and there will be several hundred fewer FX shots. The script has lost an expensive scene on a frozen river Thames, and a chase through the streets of London has had its schedule cut from a fortnight to under a week. ‘The hard thing is you have to make painful decisions that cut into some very entertaining sequences,’ says Bruckheimer, but concedes ‘the audience will never miss them’,” the same movie-oriented publication says.

As we also noted on a previous occasion, “On Stranger Tides” goes into production this summer in Hawaii and is scheduled for release in May next year. New additions to the cast include Penelope Cruz as the love interest of Depp’s Cpt. Sparrow and while Ian McShane is villain Blackbeard. To replace Orlando Bloom, Disney is considering either of newcomers Max Irons and Sam Claflin.