Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - Jerry Bruckheimer interview
Interview by Rob Carnevale
SUPER-producer Jerry Bruckheimer talks about jumping on board for Pirates of the Caribbean sequel, Dead Man’s Chest.
Q. How did Gore Verbinski cope with undertaking this mammoth task?
A. He loves making movies and he loves the fact that he has these wonderful actors to work with and terrific writers. It’s a real collaboration between all of them, it’s like family – the writers were on the set the entire time working with Johnny, Orlando and Keira and the rest of the cast. They had a ball and that’s why everybody’s back. It’s a good working environment and a great experience for everyone – very creative.
Q. You have a very large British cast on this. Was that always intentional?
A. Well Gore was looking for wonderful character actors and I think in America, unfortunately, a lot of our great character actors are chewed up on television. You see them every week, sometimes on some of our shows. But the British actors who are wonderful are not chewed up on television, which is great. They’re also really fresh to American and world-wide audiences, so that’s what we gravitated towards.
Q. What made you think of The East India Trading Company as a template for this and do you think Jack Sparrow represents the little guy against big corporations?
A. It’s really our writers who came up with the idea. But it does sort of mirror what’s happening in different countries, especially in America where you have these enormous chains that put everyone out of business. They take all of the independent operators and swallow them up, so I think that’s kind of what they were looking to do.
Q. What is it about swashbuckling movies that never goes out of fashion?
A. Well first of all, I think pirate movies have been dead for a long time. It’s been 40 years since a pirate movie came out that was a success – maybe even longer. This one became such a huge success because of [writers] Ted and Terry who first of all created this wonderful fantasy about pirates who turned into skeletons in the moonlight and had to return treasure and steal it. It was a unique premise that we hadn’t seen before, so that’s where it all started. Then we populated that with a wonderful director and some amazing actors and that’s how we got movies that work. The swashbuckling thing is just part of the action and adventure. But if you don’t fall in love with the characters we really haven’t done our job. The story and the plot is what’s really important.
Q. How did the hurricane affect filming on the set of the film?
A. We had a number of storms that came in and slowed us down unfortunately. Hurricane Wilma came in and damaged some of our ships in the tank we were shooting in. But somehow we got the movie finished and we’re all here to show it to you.
Q. Are you thinking beyond 3?
A. Yes we are. We’re hoping to continue the series of films. Audiences love it and we love making it so hopefully we’ll get the same team back together again and make another one.
Q. How easy is it to get a team like this back together?
A. Well I think it’s all about the work. If they like the work that they do then I think they’ll be back. I think everybody seems to enjoy the second one as much as the first one so hopefully we’ll have them all back and have some fun again.
Q. Can you talk a little about one of your next projects as producer, Deja Vu?
A. We just finished filming Deja Vu about three weeks ago with Denzel Washington and Tony Scott. It’s a crime procedural with a major love story. It’s unique, interesting, different and a fresh approach to that genre, so we’re excited about that. It should be here in December and in the States in November.
Read our interview with Orlando Bloom
View pictures from the UK premiere