Pirates of the Caribbean Actor Says Disney Is “Definitely Talking About” a Sixth Movie

Disney is “definitely talking about” doing a sixth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, according to Lee Arenberg, who played pirate Pintel opposite Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow in the first three films of the franchise. Neither Arenberg nor Mackenzie Crook, who played Pintel’s pirate partner Ragetti in the Gore Verbinski-directed trilogy, were brought back for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides or Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. The fifth and currently final film in the series that first set sail in 2003, inspired by Walt Disney’s famed Disneyland attraction, released in May 2017 after years of development hell and earned nearly $800 million worldwide.

“They’re definitely talking about it, as far as I know,” Arenberg told Kendall Talks TV. On potentially reprising his Pintel role alongside Crook’s Ragetti, Arenberg said, “I mean yeah, of course, obviously. But they’ve already done two without us [laughs]. I love it, though, I love that part.”

“But it’s not up to me,” Arenberg added. “It’s something to talk about during a pandemic.”

Dead Men Tell No Tales hinted at a sixth and possibly final film when a post-credit scene revealed the return of the cursed Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), previously vanquished by the efforts of Sparrow, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), and wife Elizabeth (Kiera Knightley) in At World’s End.

In 2017, before the release of Dead Men Tell No Tales, director Joachim Rønning described the fifth movie as “the beginning of the finale.” Dead Men Tell No Tales was the second lowest-grossing entry in the franchise at $794 million worldwide, behind 2006’s Dead Man’s Chest ($1.06 billion), 2011’s On Stranger Tides ($1.04 billion), and 2007’s At World’s End ($963 million), but ahead of the original film, Curse of the Black Pearl ($654 million).

Months later, in 2018, Disney tapped Deadpool screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick to develop a possible reboot without Depp. Walt Disney Studios president of production Sean Bailey told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018, “We want to bring in a new energy and vitality. I love the [Pirates] movies, but part of the reason Paul and Rhett are so interesting is that we want to give it a kick in the pants. And that’s what I’ve tasked them with.”

The scribes exited the project in February 2019. By October of that year, Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin was hired to reboot the franchise with Ted Elliott, who co-wrote the first three movies with writing partner Terry Rossio. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it wasn’t known if the new direction being plotted by Mazin and Elliott would include Sparrow or Depp.