Why the Director of the ‘Pirates’ Film Hated Its Name

Everything started with Michael Eisner.

The former CEO of The Walt Disney Company came from a Hollywood studio background.

Eisner always encouraged tie-ins between films and Disney theme parks.

The former head of Paramount Pictures unintentionally created tension due to this tactic.

To a larger point, Eisner’s desire for marketable titles led to an odd bit of movie history.

The director of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl hated something about the film.

Let’s talk about all the weirdness that unfolded behind the scenes on this classic Disney movie.

A Troubled Start

No 21st-century live-action movie matters more to Disney than Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

That’s just math, as the franchise has earned $4.5 billion worldwide from its five releases.

That’s an average of $900 million per movie for a brand best known as a theme park ride.

None of that revenue could have been possible without the first film, which wasn’t a slam dunk to happen.

When Eisner defected from Paramount to Disney, he planned to leverage Hollywood regularly.

That behavior started with Splash Mountain, which owes its name to an unlikely source.

Here’s one for you Disney buffs. Disney named the film after the Tom Hanks/Darryl Hannah film, Splash.

The Imagineers intended to call the wet ride Zip-a-Dee River Run, but Eisner overruled them.

I’ll ask Disney Legend Tony Baxter to explain this oddity:

According to him, Disney wanted to promote Splash the film with Splash Mountain, the ride.

Eisner requested this even though the two things had nothing in common.

Also, Splash debuted in theaters in 1984, five years before Splash Mountain. So, none of it makes sense.

Since Eisner fashioned himself as Mr. Hollywood, he pushed hard for weird things like this.

The former CEO also wanted to create Disney films based on theme park attractions.

This idea was objectively terrible right up until it was brilliant, as Eisner prioritized three of them.

Country Bears bombed so hard that Disney got cold feet about Pirates of the Caribbean.

It didn’t help that Eddie Murphy’s Haunted Mansion had script issues from the start.

A friend of mine worked on both productions, and they were as messy as Hollywood gets.

Eisner didn’t want to jeopardize Pirates of the Caribbean the ride and got cold feet about the movie.

What Is Johnny Depp Doing?

The Country Bears and Haunted Mansion earned a combined $200 million while costing $125 million.

So, you can understand why Eisner reconsidered the validity of this strategy.

Disney attractions, while wonderful, aren’t well-known for their stories, as The Country Bears showed.

People knew the brand but didn’t know enough about the characters to want to watch a movie.

That same problem tanked Haunted Mansion as well. So, how did Pirates of the Caribbean avoid that fate?

Well, the answer centers on the controversial actor who starred in the film.

While Johnny Depp has garnered headlines for his behavior with his ex-wife, Amber Heard, he was a godsend to Disney.

Eisner and his team didn’t always see it that way, though, as Depp showed up on set and confused everyone.

Think about the situation from Disney’s perspective. The Country Bears had just bombed.

Reports on the production of Haunted Mansion weren’t good, either.

Now, Depp showed up on set and started playing an unknown character in such a strange way.

Depp portrayed Captain Jack Sparrow as flamboyant and unapologetically criminal.

When the early footage, aka the dailies, came in, execs panicked.

They were spending $140 million on Pirates of the Caribbean, and nobody knew what the star was doing.

The fact that Sparrow slurred his speech like he was drunk all the time didn’t help any.

Before the film’s release, Disney execs worried that nobody could relate to such a quirky character.

With the benefit of hindsight, we all understand that Depp was infusing his character with a rock star quality.

His odd acting choices differentiated the film and added to its authenticity.

The Right Director for the Job

People believed that Depp was a mercurial pirate capable of anything at a given moment.

That made him more interesting than any protagonist in cinema at the time, and audiences gravitated to him.

Before the film’s release, nobody knew how movie-goers would react to him, though.

So, Eisner pressured the marketing team to sell a Pirates of the Caribbean movie as can’t-miss entertainment.

To grease the wheels a bit, Eisner added a subtitle to differentiate the film from the ride.

Pirates of the Caribbean meant something to everyone who had ridden the beloved attraction.

However, the characters from the ride really only stand out to the most passionate Disney fans.

There weren’t enough of them to carry the film, nor was that Disney’s target audience.

Eisner envisioned these attraction-based movies as a means to market Disney theme parks to non-fans.

For this reason, the movies worked as Trojan horses to entice more fans to visit Disney.

Well, that was the plan, but it had backfired for The Country Bears and wouldn’t succeed with The Haunted Mansion.

Everyone at Disney seemed uncomfortably aware that it was Pirates of the Caribbean or nothing.

To his credit, director Gore Verbinski handled the challenging situation with remarkable acumen.

Not coincidentally, Disney hired him to direct the next two Pirates movies.

Verbinski also reunited with Depp on a delightful (non-Disney) animated film named Rango.

So, the fact that Depp got along with everybody proved integral to the film’s success.

Verbinski allowed Depp to try an approach with Captain Jack Sparrow that nobody else at Disney liked.

The director was right, while Eisner and co. were wrong, but the CEO still got his way on something.

What the Director Hated

At its heart, the name of the film makes no sense. The subtitle is The Curse of the Black Pearl.

Have you ever stopped to think about how that statement is objectively wrong?

While the title is undeniably catchy, it doesn’t allude to anything that happens in the film.

Sure, the crew of the Black Pearl was cursed, but it wasn’t anything specific to the ship.

According to the script and the film’s eventual plot, Barbossa and his team made a mistake.

In their greed, they stole the wrong treasure, Aztec gold that they were warned was cursed.

For that reason, they turned into skeleton pirates incapable of feeling pleasure. They were de facto undead.

That curse didn’t happen because of their ship. They sailed the Black Pearl many times before then.

Nothing of incident caused them to turn undead in the moonlight. It was the treasure’s curse that did that.

However, Eisner and his team loved the memorable nature of the title. It was something to sell.

So, Disney overruled Verbinski and chose that as the title, which drove him to distraction.

You can glance at the various early posters and movie trailers to verify this fact.

Verbinski intentionally left the subtitle off some of them. In other instances, he made the wording innocuous.

The director didn’t want viewers thinking much about the subtitle since he knew it made no sense.

However, in Eisner’s defense, he had the right idea. The added wording allowed for differentiation.

Each sequel could add a supplementary name to the franchise’s main branding, Pirates of the Caribbean.

Eisner Deserves No Credit

Despite my saying that, I emphasize that Eisner deserves no credit for this project.

The Curse of the Black Pearl became an absolute juggernaut at the box office.

After the first movie earned $654 million, demand for the sequel proved unprecedented.

At one point, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest claimed the title of biggest box office opener ever.

Verbinski fully understood the appeal of the ride, the story, and the characters, deftly combining them.

Meanwhile, Eisner saw shadows everywhere, which was infuriating but understandable.

This entire production occurred around the same time that Eisner faced civil war at Disney.

Walt Disney’s nephew was trying to oust Eisner from the company, which would happen within three years.

The book about this battle, DisneyWar by James B. Stewart, details Eisner’s poor decision-making.

According to Stewart, Verbinski sensed that Eisner intended to cancel the production.

That would have been a multi-billion-dollar mistake that Verbinski prevented from happening.

First, the director gave Eisner a special look at the movie plans, which led to Eisner saying: “I love it. Why does it have to cost so much?” Later, he said something that would have been idiotic:

“The theme park is a drawback…Why don’t we move this away from the park.”

Yes, the CEO of Disney wanted the Pirates of the Caribbean movie to be detached from the ride.

The entire reason Eisner was there that day was to cancel the project anyway.

So, Verbinski deserves the credit for the making of The Curse of the Black Pearl, not Disney’s CEO.

The director did get his revenge by making the subtitle illegible on many of the film’s posters, though.

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Feature Photo: Walt Disney Studios