Orlando Bloom Has One Condition To Return For Pirates Of The Caribbean 6

Gore Verbinski's actioner "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" shocked audiences everywhere when it was released in 2003 because it was actually fun to watch. The film was based on a ride at Disneyland, giving it a veneer of crass commercialism. Verbinski, however, crammed two movies' worth of pulp adventure set pieces into the movie, and assembled a charismatic cast to play silly, fun characters. Johnny Depp may be disgraced now, but in 2003, he netted an Oscar nomination for playing the flamboyant pirate Jack Sparrow. Orlando Bloom played the hunky Will Turner, and Keira Knightley played the beautiful and tough Elizabeth Swann. Geoffrey Rush hammed it up as the ghost of a dead pirate lord. "The Curse of the Black Pearl" became a bigger hit than anyone could have imagined, earning over $654 million on its $150 million budget. 

Its success, however, led to a series of over-bloated super-sequels that diminished in quality in direct proportion to their increase in incident. The 2006 and 2007 sequels "Dead Man's Chest" and "At World's End" were two parts of a massive follow-up story that collectively ran 319 minutes. Bloom and Knightley left the series for the 2011 and 2017 sequels "On Stranger Tides" and "Dead Men Tell No Tales," although Depp and Rush remained involved. The films have gotten increasingly expensive, but they still managed to be hits. "Tales" cost as much as $320 million to make, but still earned almost $796 million.

There may still be some lingering fans of the "Pirates" series, although it's unlikely the disgraced Depp will be welcomed back. Bloom and Knightley, meanwhile, have every reason to return, should they want to. In a recent interview with EW, Bloom did express some interest in reprising the role of Will Turner, but he said that he would only come back if the story was excellent. Reasonably, he needs there to be a very good script.

Bloom has previously said that he left the "Pirates" series because he wanted to work on other things and keep some variety in his career. Now that he's 48, he's ready to go back, having taken a sizable break. He also implied that Depp likely couldn't return — he's box office poison at this point — but that a Jack Sparrow-like character should likely be at the center of the picture. Nothing has been proposed, of course, and no sixth "Pirates" movie is in production (as much as producer Jerry Bruckheimer wants it), but Bloom would be happy to play Will Turner if a great script came together. In his words: 

"My thing is, if the script was great and — ideally it was everybody — it'd be kind of like in for a penny, in for a pound, you know. [...] What they're thinking ... is how to do it. Do you bring in a female leading character that replicates Jack in some way? I don't know. The jury is out on how to do it again, but if [the script] was great [I'd do it]."

A flamboyant pirate queen sounds like a fun idea, provided the character was fun and the actress playing her was energetic and wild. Knightley has said that she has no interest in returning to the series, as her character's arc wrapped up neatly at the end of "At World's End." There was also some talk from Bruckheimer of simultaneously making a sequel starring Margot Robbie, while also rebooting the series and starting over. The Robbie film ended up getting canceled, but a reboot may also be fine. Seeing as the films were initially based on a theme park attraction, there's not too much story integrity that can be violated. Just include "A Pirate's Life for Me" on the soundtrack, and maybe everything will be okay.