After brilliant performances as Harley Quinn and Tonya Harding, Margot Robbie is adding “pirate” to her impressive list of characters. The 29-year-old actress is teaming up with Birds of Prey writer Christina Hodson for an all-new, female-led version of Pirates of the Caribbean.
Hodson will be writing the script which will be a new story with fresh characters, with no link to Jack Sparrow’s adventures. The film, which is currently in the early stages of development, will also be separate from the already announced reboot of the popular franchise that writers, Ted Elliott and Craig Mazin are working on.
Jerry Bruckheimer, who served as producer on the original movies, will also produce Margot Robbie’s movie and the reboot. Plot details are currently under wraps and there is no information about who will join Robbie in the cast.
Pirates of the Caribbean is one of the most successful movie franchises of all time, with Johnny Depp taking the lead as Captain Jack Sparrow since the first movie in 2003. Depp has appeared in all the films including the final instalment, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales in 2017.
Unfortunately, that movie earned the lowest cumulative lifetime box-office gross of the entire franchise. The studio has wanted to revive the brand with new talent and new stories ever since.
And it seems like casting Margot Robbie to lead a new story is a smart move. Her recent features include Bombshell and Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood. Robbie will also be starring in James Gunn’s Suicide Squad sequel.
Robbie and Hodson don’t just do their best work on screen. In 2019, the duo launched the Lucky Exports Pitch Program – a new initiative aimed at getting more female writers hired by studios to work on action-centric movies.
