Believe it or not, there’s a very small chance that Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is actually going to be good. Whatever reputation Johnny Depp has left may not survive another news cycle but the Pirates franchise just might live to sail the seas another day. Dead Men Tell No Tales (or Salazar’s Revenge in Europe) is intended to be a return to the original format where the central character isn’t Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) and the scripts are actually funny. That’s not to say that I hated (or even disliked) the other installments but they lacked the wit, physicality and exceptional comic timing of the first two films.

Both Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly will be re-joining Johnny Depp this time around but the story will center on Will and Elizabeth’s son, Henry (Brenton Thwaites), and fellow newcomer Carina (Kaya Scodelario) as they help Jack to find the Trident of Poseidon to deal with his old nemesis Armando Salazar (Javier Bardem). Henry is also out to free his father from the curse of the Flying Dutchman so that Will and Elizabeth can be reunited.

Controversially, Johnny Depp is said to have rejected an earlier version of the script where the villain was female. Screenwriter Terry Rossio, who has been involved with every Pirates movie so far revealed on his personal blog that the actors were worried that it would be “redundant to Dark Shadows, which also featured a female villain”. For context, Dark Shadows is a Tim Burton movie from 2012, based on the gothic television soap of the same name, starring Johnny Depp and Eva Green as an evil witch called Angelique. Unless there’s some unknown detail that makes the two villains in any way comparable, Depp’s objection seems to make absolutely no sense at all. Not only is there no real connection between the two movies (other than Depp himself) but it’s ridiculous to suggest that there can only be one female villain at a time (or in cinematic history as a whole).

Paul McCartney will be making a cameo appearance in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, no doubt attempting to one-up Keith Richards who appeared as Jack’s father in 2007’s Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. McCartney, on the other hand, has scored the oh-so-glamourous role of “Jail Guard #2”, which may not have been quite what he imagined. He does look pretty badass in a pirate costume though.

In what is perhaps a more surprising turn of events, the movie is reportedly being held to ransom by a group of hackers. Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger, revealed on May 15 that one of the company’s movies had been stolen and that hackers were threatening to release the movie bit by bit unless Disney handed over a large sum of money via Bitcoin. While Iger did not reveal which title had been stolen, Deadline reported that it was Dead Men Tell No Tales. Disney is said to be working with the FBI and refusing to pay the hackers. Ironic that a movie about traditional pirates should be hijacked by a modern variety of the same…

Are you looking forward to Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales?