Oh, you want to know what Jerry Bruckheimer’s up to? No? Well, while promoting The Lone Ranger at CinemaCon, he gave Collider a taste of just what the man will be drip feeding us over the coming months, from the sides of our buses and the front pages of our social media websites.
Never a man to value integrity over financial sense, Bruckheimer announced that his current top priority is Pirates of the Caribbean 5, which is as of yet officially untitled. Sure, the reviews of Pirates of the Caribbean 4 were terrible, but who could argue with $1 billion in worldwide revenue? Who in their right mind wouldn’t, in the face of those profits, attempt to rehash the exact same thing, for slightly more money, to finally kill it dead in the water? With that film’s budget conservatively estimated at $150 million, who in their right mind wouldn’t want to just do the same thing over again?
The robots at Disney have allocated a satisfactory date for release – July 10th 2015, placing it perfectly in line for the Christmas DVD/Blu-ray market. We all know that filmmaking is an industry, but it’s a bit depressing when a film that was so beloved when it first arrived is now such a sleek, profitable series of mathematical equations.
Pirates of the Caribbean 5 aside, what else does Bruckheimer have in store for our wallets? You guessed it, National Treasure 3! The third installment of the series that nobody asked for, starring Nicolas Cage havinga historical conspiracy-themed nervous breakdown, sort of like Sucker Punch but with less violence and women.
Another Bruckheimer equation – The Bruckheimer Equation would be a great John Grisham title – is Bad Boys 3, which is be more of a problem now that Will Smith is a truly global megastar wielding increasing amounts of control over the scripting of projects he’s involved in. He’s unlikely to want to rejoin with perennial liability and all-round nutcase Martin Lawrence, even if the film is helmed by the artist Michael Bay, who is also working on Pain and Gain and Transformers 4.
So yeah, that’s what Jerry Bruckheimer’s up to. Why do you ask?