Jerry Bruckheimer Says Pirates of the Caribbean 6 Talks With Johnny Depp Are Underway, No Deal Signed

Jerry Bruckheimer says he's talking to Johnny Depp about coming back as Captain Jack Sparrow. Speaking to Deadline after receiving a Disney Legends award at this year's D23 Expo, Bruckheimer put it plainly: "We're talking with Johnny, we're working on a screenplay, and hopefully we can get this done." No contract. No start date. No confirmed script. Just talks.

That single quote has been enough to send fan pages into overdrive, with posts on X declaring Depp "officially set to return" as Jack Sparrow. He is not officially set to return. Bruckheimer's language is careful and conditional: "hopefully we can get this done." That's a producer describing negotiations in progress, not an announcement.

Here's the part that undercuts the breathless fan reaction: according to Deadline's sourcing, Pirates 6 may not even be a Jack Sparrow movie. Reporting cited by Polygon, Comingsoon, and IBTimes UK all point to the same detail. The film could center on Margot Robbie's character, introduced in the 2017 spinoff-adjacent storyline, with Depp's Sparrow reduced to a supporting role.

That's a meaningful distinction that got buried under headlines about Depp's "return." If accurate, this isn't Jack Sparrow riding back into the spotlight. It's a passing of the torch, with Sparrow as a nostalgia cameo rather than the engine of the story.

Robbie was announced as the presumptive lead of a Pirates spinoff back in 2020. She said in 2022 that Disney had canceled the project entirely, a claim Bruckheimer disputed at the time, according to Polygon. Whatever version of the film is now moving forward, it appears to have absorbed both timelines: Depp is back in talks, Robbie's character is reportedly still central.

Indulgexpress flagged something worth taking seriously. Bruckheimer said almost the same thing roughly a year earlier. In August 2025, he told Entertainment Weekly he'd spoken with Depp about the role and believed the actor "would do it," according to the Times of India. Now, a year later, he's saying they're "working on a screenplay" and hoping to "get this done."

That's not necessarily a breakthrough. It could just as easily be the same stalled negotiation being restated for a new news cycle. Bruckheimer has been saying variations of "we'd love to have him back" for years without a signed deal materializing.

Depp's status with Disney has remained uncertain for years following his high-profile 2022 defamation trial against ex-wife Amber Heard, according to Geo News. That trial centered on a 2018 Washington Post op-ed Heard wrote describing herself as a public figure representing domestic abuse. Depp argued it was widely understood to reference him and testified that his career was effectively "done" from the moment the allegations were made, according to IBTimes UK. During questioning, he was also asked about a hypothetical Disney offer involving alpacas, which he said would not have changed his stated unwillingness at the time to return to the franchise.

Depp's box office standing has been on the mend since. He's set to appear as Ebenezer Scrooge in "Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol," out November 13, part of what Geo News calls a broader Hollywood comeback. He made a surprise in-character appearance at San Diego Comic-Con to promote it, which is part of what's fueling renewed Pirates speculation now.

Dead Men Tell No Tales, the fifth film, made $795.9 million worldwide in 2017, the weakest total in the franchise. The five films combined have grossed $4.5 billion globally, according to Comingsoon and Geo News. That kind of money is exactly why Disney hasn't walked away from the property even after years of stalled development, defamation-trial fallout, and conflicting statements about whether the sequel was alive or dead.

Bruckheimer also used the D23 conversation to weigh in on an unrelated Paramount matter, pushing back on reported plans by David Ellison to relocate the studio out of California amid an antitrust dispute tied to the Warner Bros. Discovery merger. "It's unfortunate that it's got this kind of political circle around it, which is a shame," he said, adding he hopes Paramount "stay[s] here."

No director, script, cast beyond Depp and Robbie, or release date has been confirmed for Pirates of the Caribbean 6. The next real signal will be whether Disney makes any formal announcement, not another quote from a producer at a fan convention.