Exclusive: Pieces of eight! Pipeline walks the plank with Pirates of the Caribbean

 “We’re going to be in the theatres whether we’re finished or not,” laughs Gore Verbinski, director of Disney’s big-splash blockbuster, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. The $100 million movie opens here in August, but hits US cinemas on July 9 – and when Pipeline caught up with Verbinski in his LA offices, his timbers were getting decidedly shivered. “Well, we stopped shooting in March, so we’re doing everything at once, unlike you normally would,” says the director. “We’re editing the movie, and we’re doing the music, and doing the sound and the ADR, and everything’s on top of itself. It’s a bit mad.”

Mad is the word for Pirates. It’s almost unique this summer in that it’s not based on a comic book. Nor is it a sequel. Or a TV show remake. But it’s far from being original Pirate material, for POTC: TCOTBP (that’s one snappy acronym) is based on one of Disneyland’s most famous – and frankly, most boring – theme park rides; a slow, water-logged tour of various pirate tableaux. If the film’s anything like the ride… “We’re really not, other than the title, based on anything,” says Verbinski, heading a cautious Pipeline off at the pass. “There’s really no story in the ride. There’s a few references to the ride – there’s a jail scene with a dog holding keys in his mouth – but they’re much more wallpaper than key elements in the plot.”

One look at the cast list though, indicated that this won’t be a dull affair. Showcased opposite in the films gloriously romantic posters are Johnny Depp (as roguish drunkard, Captain Jack Sparrow), and our very own Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightly, taking centre stage as Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann, the star-cross’d lovers whose affair is put to the sword by Geoffrey Rush’s nefarious Captain Barbossa. You don’t attract talent like that without something special. “I think Orlando is much more taking on the Errol Flynn role,” says Verbinski of cinema’s hottest Elf, here in his first real post-LOTR lead role. “I was a little nervous because of the kind of pop star quality of Orlando. But he has ‘it’, that thing on screen is such a wonderful presence.” And what of the Deppster, a man to whom blockbusters have previously been anathema? “Johnny had the same response I had. He couldn’t help smiling, because how often are you going to get the phone call: ‘Do you want to be in a pirate movie?’” recalls Verbinski. “There is a nine year-old in all of us that just loves pirates.”

But pirate movies have been box office poison for a long, long time – Renny Harlin’s Cutthroat Island, anyone? Verbinski, though, is confident of success, thanks to a few prudent alterations to the old format. Namely, a plot which concerns a pirate curse that transforms Rush’s murderous goons into skeletal bad-asses by night. “That was the thing that really convinced me that we have something. This is the singularly most failed genre of our time, and I think having that supernatural element allows us to not just be a swashbuckler.” But it’s the same element which is giving Verbinski a murderous migraine, with ILM currently working on the film’s 600-odd effect shots – around 250 of which are deleting modern sailboats from the shot, admittedly – with that release date looming. “It’s a lot of fun, and ILM is doing a great job,” he laughs. “But I’m ready for My Dinner With Andre!”