The Development of Pirates of the Caribbean Movie, Explained

It’s easy to take the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise for granted today, but back in the early 1990s, when screenwriting duo Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio first attempted to sell Disney on the idea, the pitch raised more than a few eyebrows at the House of Mouse.

Not only did the writers want to adapt a theme park attraction, but they also wanted to play in a genre that had long since fallen out of favor with audiences — unless we’re talking about Muppet Treasure Island (ironically produced and distributed by Disney). Of course, Will Turner, Elizabeth Swan, and the indelible Captain Jack Sparrow would ultimately breathe new life into the pirate’s life for all of us via Curse of the Black Pearl, which set sail in the summer of 2003 and kickstarted a multi-billion dollar IP that endures to this day.

With director Gore Verbinski’s original Pirates trilogy airing on SYFY next week (click here for complete scheduling information), let’s take a look back at the stormy development seas weathered by Disney’s iconic swashbuckling series.

The long development history of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise

As mentioned above, the story of bringing Pirates to the big screen began in the early ’90s with Elliott and Rossio, who began collaborating with Disney on 1992’s Aladdin. “Terry and I had come up with this great approach to a pirate movie,” the former told Creative Screenwriting in 2016. “We pitched it at Disney as a tie-in to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and at the time Disney said, ‘No, don’t think so.'” 

Interestingly, the creative partners would end up penning a very different kind of pirate flick, 2002’s Treasure Planet (a sci-fi twist on Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island), before Curse of the Black Pearl officially entered production.

Around the same time Elliott and Rossio were trying to plunder the Pirates IP treasure chest, Australian screenwriter Stuart Beattie came up with a screenplay based on the eponymous ride entitled Quest to the Caribbean, which he pitched as “Raiders of the Lost Ark on the high seas” (a notion that would carry into the final product).

After shopping it all around town, however, Beattie couldn’t find anyone willing to finance the pricey project that would end up costing a whopping $140 million. It wasn’t until several years later that Disney executives finally warmed up to the idea of adapting three of the company’s theme park rides — Country Bear Jamboree, Haunted Mansion, and Pirates of the Caribbean — into a trio of feature films. Jay Wolpert was the first writer to take a stab at Pirates, though his version wasn’t enough to sell the studio on green-lighting the movie.

“I contributed significant elements to Jack’s character, as well as to the story, and a number of other contributions all of which combined, were sufficient enough to entitle me to that which we writers prize most of all, screen credit and the goodies that go with it,” Wolpert, who passed away in early 2022 at the age of 79, said in a 2012 interview.

Beattie then came back into the mix and submitted a draft, which was enough to draw in producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who used his mighty industry influence to bring in Verbinski to direct and Johnny Depp to star. From there, Elliott and Rossio were tapped to bring the script over the finish line, their core contribution being zombie pirates cursed by stolen Aztec gold.

“In 2002, Bruckheimer Films’ Mike Stenson asked, ‘Would you be interested?’ I said, ‘Yes, absolutely. But I have to tell you, we have an approach. It’s the only approach we want to write, and this is the only approach that has a shot in hell of being a successful movie. If you don’t like this approach, we really don’t want to do the story,'” Elliott said to Creative Screenwriting. “That intrigued him, so we went in and pitched this approach — the same one we had pitched 10 years earlier — and everybody came on board. It was the idea of bringing in the supernatural element. Instead of doing a swashbuckling romance, doing a swashbuckling Gothic romance.”

“We realized that there really hadn’t ever been a supernatural pirate movie attempted,” added Rossio. “We went to Disney and said, ‘Look, the ride itself begins with a talking skull.'”

This idea was enough to get everyone onboard (pun intended) and Elliott and Rossio ended up with final screen credit, while simultaneously sharing story attribution alongside Wolpert and Beattie. And so, a decade after creative development first began, cameras finally got rolling on Curse of the Black Pearl in the fall of 2002. The rest, as they say, is yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.

The first three Pirates of the Caribbean films — Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), Dead Man’s Chest (2006), and At World’s End (2007) — will air on SYFY next week. Click here for complete scheduling information!