Johnny Depp Axed The Idea Of A Female Villain For “Pirates Of The Caribbean 5”
Based on the trailer, the plot of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is about Johnny Depp, playing the character of Captain Johnny Depp, facing off against Javier Bardem as a character named Captain Armando Salazar. But according to a blog post by PotC:DMTNT co-writer Terry Rossio (via Screen Rant), Javier Bardem’s villain character was originally written as a woman. And the reason that character is no longer a lady is because Johnny Depp didn’t want it that way.
When Johnny read that the villain was going to be a woman, he allegedly requested it be changed to a dude. Why? He had already starred in a movie with a female villain (Dark Shadows), and he didn’t want to give the audience a case of déjà-vu.
“My version of Dead Men Tell No Tales was set aside because it featured a female villain, and Johnny Depp was worried that would be redundant to Dark Shadows, which also featured a female villain.
Of course there is also the possibility that all those screenplays simply sucked. But usually when I go back to read a screenplay that wasn’t produced, it holds up, often better than the film that was eventually produced. Sometimes it just takes a single decision by a single person, often just a whim, to destroy years of story creation and world-building.”
But starring in five movies as the same tired hobo pirate character swashbuckling against five male pirate-y villains isn’t redundant? Got it.
Johnny is dumb for a multitude of reasons, but I’m going to focus on one. Johnny thinking people would compare a female villain in Pirates to Eva Green’s female villain in Dark Shadows is too much. Dark Shadows came out in 2012. I saw it twice, and a female villain is literally the last thing I remember about Dark Shadows. I’m usually too busy remembering how dirty Tim Burton did the Dark Shadows legacy, and that unintentionally hilarious scene where Chloe Moretz turns into a teenage werewolf.
Pic: Wenn.com