Pirates 4 Moves Up the 'Priority' Food-Chain

I've been on the "Fuck Pirates!" bandwagon ever since the first sequel Dead Man's Chest "graced" the silver screen three years ago.

You'll have to excuse me for not enjoying a near-three hour film stuffed up the ass with pointless action sequences, damn-near every character from the first Pirates returning and getting their own sub-plot and a bug-eyed Johnny Depp mumbling syllables with a British accent. Sorry, but that character wore out his welcome after the first film - the only good one in the series, not surprisingly. That and the third installment At World's End defined the "Everything and the kitchen sink" mentality of blockbusters.

But they both earned about $2 billion between them. So a fourth film was inevitable and has been in development for awhile now - albeit under-wraps for the most part. We knew that Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott were returning to pen the screenplay, Captain Jack Sparrow himself Johnny Depp had signed on to return and a 2012 release was being targeted.

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer has also been developing The Lone Ranger for Disney - again with Rossio & Elliott on script-duties and Depp as the lead. Strike that, he's more of the co-lead - i.e. playing Indian sidekick Tonto instead of the title character. But that project (which was being geared up to happen sooner) has been delayed in favor of the "higher priority" Pirates 4 the producer tells HitFix.

As for the script to said fourquel, the Bruck called it "funny" and "it's a whole new way of going." Yeah, I can already visualize it. "Captain Jack in Space!"