Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow Status Confirmed

Amid ongoing rumors of behind-the-scenes talks of his return, Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow status in the Pirates franchise has been confirmed.

It has been six years since Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow was on the big screen sailing the seas. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) was the fifth, and currently final, installment in The Walt Disney Company’s Jerry Bruckheimer-produced swashbuckling series based on the ride of the same name at places like Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort.

Starting in the early 2000s with Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), the series has gone on to gross $4.5 billion at the box office, with additional entries Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007), Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011), and Dead Men Tell No Tales making the franchise the 15th highest-grossing in history.

Despite its large ensemble cast, many fans attribute the success of Pirates to Depp’s performance as the rogueish Captain Jack Sparrow. Disney’s worry over Depp’s take on the character would soon be brushed under the carpet as audiences flocked to the movie theater to see Depp in action. His role as Jack Sparrow is still his most beloved, commercial, and internationally recognized to date. Since the release of Dead Men Tell No Tales, though, Depp’s return as Captain Jack Sparrow has been in flux.

The slew of lawsuits and commentary over the years regarding Depp and ex-wife Amber Heard’s relationship saw the former exiled from Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean and Warner Bros. Fantastic Beasts franchise. At present, there is still a question of whether Depp will return as Jack Sparrow, but there is now more and more indication that he will don the pirate suit once more.

Related: ‘Pirates’ Star Johnny Depp Finally Speaks Out After Abandoning Hollywood

Earlier this year, Jerry Bruckheimer stated there is still movement on the sixth film (even after Margot Robbie dropped out of a planned spinoff) and that he would love to work with Depp once again. Depp, who during the defamation trial last year said that he wouldn’t return to Disney even if they offered him $300 million, has now reportedly gone back on that sentiment and is apparently open to the project.

So after Depp’s film was chosen to open Cannes and the comments mad by both him and Bruckheimer, now a pirate expert has confirmed Captain Jack Sparrow’s status as a true, authentic pirate. Iszi Lawrence, a children’s historical fiction author and pirate expert, recently dissected numerous pirate movies, including Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

“Johnny Depp’s portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow as a cool rock star is bang-on because pirates were seen by the general populous as incredibly cool and sexy. I mean, seriously, The Golden Age of Piracy was, really, in my opinion, sort of around 1715 to 1722, something like that,” Lawrence describes after watching clips from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. “The General History of the Pyrates was published in 1724, which led to everyone talking about pirates. They were seen as so cool, breaking all the rules. These were men without, like, blood rite, acting like lords. they were incredibly cool. Word had gotten out, and loads of people wanted to be pirates. They were living a life that nobody dared to live. They were literally just seizing their freedom and going for it.”

Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow Lost Over Lawsuits

Back in 2016, a year after marrying Amber Heard (who he met on the set of The Rum Diary (2011)), Heard filed for divorce and took out a restraining order on her husband, citing physical and verbal abuse. What followed were years of litigation regarding domestic abuse allegations from both parties.

In 2018, the British tabloid The Sun claimed that Depp was a “wife-beater.” The publication, along with its parent company News Group Newspapers LTD, went to trial against Depp in 2020 after he brought a libel lawsuit against them. The highly-publicized trial saw testimonies from both Depp and Heard, with Justice Andrew Nicol finding 12 of the 14 claims of domestic abuse “substantially true.” Depp lost the case and also lost his subsequent appeal request. As a result of the outcome, Depp was asked by Warner Bros. to resign from his role as dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald in J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts Harry Potter spinoff.

Related: Johnny Depp Stars in Amber Heard’s Movie Despite Domestic Violence Controversy

Then, there was Heard’s Op-Ed in The Washington Post. The opinion essay penned by Heard and published in late 2018 revealed the actress as a victim of physical and sexual violence. In early 2019, Depp sued his ex-wife for defamation with a huge $50 million suit. Heard countersued on her own defamation claims for $100 million. Before the defamation suit could hit the courtroom, Depp became locked in the libel lawsuit in the United Kingdom.

Fast-forward to April 2022, and the defamation lawsuit commenced. In front of a courtroom and jury presided over by Judge Penney Azcarate, Depp’s legal team consisting of Camille Vasquez and Ben Chew, battled against Heard’s team, Elaine Bredehoft and Benjamin Rottenborn.

After six weeks, the jury found Heard had defamed Depp on all three counts and awarded him $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages, which Judge Azcarate lowered to $350,000 due to Virginia state law. On Heard’s side, the jury awarded her $2 million in compensatory damages on a count of finding that Depp’s former lawyer Adam Waldman had defamed the Aquaman (2018) actress.

Since the trial ended, Depp has appeared as the controversial monarch King Louis XV in Maïwenn’s Jeanne du Barry (2023), which opened the Cannes Film Festival, and Heard recently returned to the public eye to promote her new feature, In the Fire (2023). At the end of the year, Heard will also return to the DC Extended Universe in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023) from director James Wan.

Depp is currently on tour with the Hollywood Vampires, where he recently was reported to have suffered a health scare.

Do you want to see Johnny Depp back as Captain Jack Sparrow? Let Inside the Magic know in the comments down below!