14 DAY TRIAL // Director Gore Verbinski abandoned the “Pirates” back in April, when he bluntly announced he wanted to focus on other projects, therefore would no longer have the time to do the fourth installment. Ever since then, Variety says on the BFDealMemo blog, Disney has been looking for a suitable replacement, and may have found one in the person of Rob Marshall.
Marshall has plenty of experience with major productions, the report says, therefore he would know how to make the fourth “Pirates” just as successful as the other three, even if it would not feature former leading stars Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom, as reports have it. Moreover, producer Jerry Bruckheimer is said to have already been consulted on the issue, and he is more than ok to have Marshall on board.
If Disney and Marshall manage to reach an understanding these following weeks, then the movie would be able to go into production soon and, thus, be ready for a 2010 release, which is precisely what the movie studio wants. “Disney is on the verge of putting Rob Marshall in as director of a fourth installment of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean,’ a move that puts the film on track for a 2010 production start, with Johnny Depp back as Captain Jack Sparrow. There hasn’t been a director at the helm of the pirate ship since April, when Gore Verbinski stepped out to focus on a movie version of the vidgame “Bioshock” for Universal.” the Variety blog reads.
There is a lot of pressure from Disney to find a good director for the fourth film. The “Pirates” trilogy was highly successful at the box-office but the movie studio now feels it has waited too much to come up with a follow-up, wherefrom the sense of urgency, says the Variety blog. “Producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney have been meeting with a number of directors in recent weeks, because the studio wants to pull the ‘Pirates’ film together and have Depp star in it before he does ‘The Lone Ranger’ for the producer and the studio. While Marshall’s involvement wasn’t immediately confirmed, sources said things look good enough that the studio has begun casting new characters that will appear in the picture.” it is further being said.
For those not in the know, Rob Marshall is also the man behind “Chicago,” “Nine” and “Memoirs of a Geisha.”