His personal life has gone so bad that it may have cost him his Oscar-nominated role in the franchise
Johnny Depp used to be in the list of actors who were paid big bucks, similar to Robert Downey Jr. and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. But then, he was accused by his now ex-wife Amber Heard saying he had committed domestic violence and thus began his nightmare. Petitions started pouring in for giving the actor the boot from the Pirates of the Caribbean and Fantastic Beasts franchises. Depp admitted in his lawsuit against Heard that thanks to her allegations, his career took a nosedive.
Jack Sparrow’s future
A Washington Post report stated that within four days of Heard making these allegations, Depp got fired from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise by Disney. Later, Depp’s lawyers claimed that Heard had cost him these roles.
Disney was also making plans to reboot the whole franchise. They had brought in Deadpool‘s writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick and are looking for “new energy”. They acknowledged the original movies had a great run and it helped both them and Depp and that they’re rebooting it because it’s worth rebooting.
Another reason could be that they were no longer able to afford Depp. As per Forbes, Depp’s salary for each Pirates movie, which includes a profit percentage is somewhere close to $100 million, which comes to Rs 700 crore. But the last movie of the franchise – Dead Men Tell No Tales was only able to collect around $800 million, which was below the amounts amassed by the previous movies. Apparently, Disney is trying to save $90 million by replacing Depp.
But recently, new revelations have been made and Disney might be thinking of keeping Depp as Amber Heard looks to be guilty of many things in their legal battle. So we may get to see him as Captain Jack Sparrow in the sixth movie.