Johnny Depp Sets Sail Alone In Fourth ‘Pirates’ Movie

It was recently announced this week that Captain Jack Sparrow is expected to set sail again, and this time he is after the most sought-after treasure imaginable: the Fountain of Youth.

The fourth installment of Disney’s highly successful “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise will begin filming in Hawaii this summer. Actor Johnny Depp will once again don his priates’ swagger and play the flamboyant Captain Jack. However, costars Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley are not expected to return.

Pirates 4 will be loosely based on the 1987 pirate novel, “On Stranger Tides” by award-winning fantasy author Tim Powers. The book tells the story of a young man — coincidentally named “Jack” — who is captured by the pirate Blackbeard and forced to join in the search for the Fountain of Youth.

According to Ted Elliott, the co-writer of the first three “Pirates” movies, that the story of the novel just happened to align with where they wanted to take the fourth film. In an interview with Empire magazine he said, “We wanted to do a story about Blackbeard and the Fountain of Youth, and Tim Powers wrote a book about Blackbeard and the Fountain of Youth… it just turns out that to do that story you would need that book.”

While Johnny Depp signed on to appear in the fourth movie in 2008, before there was a script, both Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom have said they had no desire to return for a fourth movie.

In an interview Knightley said, “It was a completely fantastic experience, and it was an amazingly large portion of my life, but I don’t think I need to go there again. I think that it’s done.” Also, the director of the original trilogy, Gore Verbinski, will not be coming back. He is being replaced by Rob Marshall, the director of “Chicago” and “Nine.”

“Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” is scheduled to dock into movie theaters on May 20th, 2011 in what will most certainly be the most blockbuster summer.

In the meantime, Johnny Depp will next be seen as the Mad Hatter in director Tim Burton’s new version “Alice in Wonderland” coming this March.

Source: Yahoo