At the premiere of his latest film, Modi: Three Days on the Wing of Madness, Johnny Depp ignited Hollywood's most buzzed-about comeback rumors with a brief, three-word response that had fans at the edge of their seats. When queried by Entertainment Tonight about his potential return as the infamous Captain Jack Sparrow in Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Depp teased, "That'd be fun."
The 62-year-old actor, who has appeared in all five films of the series alongside Geoffrey Rush and Kevin McNally, didn't delve deeper into his comment but it was enough to stir up the memories of a global phenomenon that started with the release of The Curse of the Black Pearl in 2003. His last studio film appearance was in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald in 2018.
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who has worked with Depp across the Pirates series, echoed the potential for the actor's return in August. "If he likes the way the part's written, I think he would do it," Bruckheimer told Entertainment Weekly. "We are still working on a screenplay. We want to make it. We just got to get the right screenplay. We haven't quite gotten there yet, but we're close."
Currently, Depp is directing Modi: Three Days on the Wing of Madness, a biographical drama inspired by artist Amedeo Modigliani. "It was something that Al [Pacino] was going to do a long, long time ago," Depp shared. "He called me and said, 'John, I think you should direct this film.'"
His upcoming role as Ebenezer Scrooge in Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol marks another shift in his career. Depp described Alastair Sim's 1951 version as "perfection" and said he aims to find "a different angle on Scrooge" in the upcoming adaptation.
