Nervous buildup to release of latest Pirates movie
By Peter Mitchell
In a small gold art deco building hidden in the maze of sound stages on the 20th Century Fox movie studio lot in Los Angeles, Jerry Bruckheimer is sitting quietly in the foyer.
He has plenty to think about.
The Hollywood super producer is under the gun.
In a few weeks the final chapter of his adventure trilogy, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, will open simultaneously in theatres around the globe, but the film is yet to be completed.
It's almost done.
Bruckheimer, director Gore Verbinski and the film's army of editors, sound mixers and special effects technicians are facing a week of sleepless nights before the final print is in the can.
The deadline is so tight he has not screened a rough cut for a test audience, a right of passage for most Hollywood films and a chance for a movie's producers, directors and studio executives to make late changes.
"Sure we're nervous," Bruckheimer, whose films, including Black Hawk Down, Pearl Harbor and Armageddon, have made more than $US14 billion ($A17 billion) at the global box office, said.
"I think it will open well, but who knows?
"No audience has seen this movie because we just don't have time.
"We showed it to a group of Gore's friends who loved it and thought it was better than the first two, but they're Gore's friends.
"So, who knows what that really means?"
Then again, Bruckheimer probably does not have to fine-tune this film.
If there is such a thing as a guaranteed Hollywood hit, the third Pirates film is it.
The Pirates franchise, which stars Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley and Australian Oscar winner, Geoffrey Rush, is one of the most profitable in Hollywood history.
Just like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, each chapter has made more money than the previous one.
The original, 2003's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, earned $US654 million ($A792.5 million) world-wide and scored Depp a best actor Oscar nomination.
Last year's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest became the third highest grossing film of all-time, earning $US1.066 billion ($A1.3 billion), behind number one Titanic which earned $US1.845 billion ($A2.24 billion) and runner-up Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King which took in $US1.12 billion ($A1.36 billion).
The third Pirates is expected to eclipse $US1 billion ($A1.21 billion) and leapfrog Return of the King.
It cost $US225 million ($A272.6 million) to make so it is not a bad return if it does top the billion dollar (US) mark.
On this day at the Fox lot, Bruckheimer has agreed to show a small group of journalists eight scenes of Pirates Three.
The Pirates films are owned by Disney, but for the final weeks of editing Bruckheimer and his team have leased the editing suites of rival studio Fox, owned by Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
It is a common occurrence as quality editing space is tight in LA.
When Bruckheimer realises his guests have arrived he gets out of his chair in the foyer, greets them with a warm handshake and leads the group through a glass security door in the art deco building, along a short corridor and into an office area.
The Pirates Three crew have made themselves at home at Fox.
The first thing you see when you enter the office is a large flag containing a picture of a pirate skull and cross bones sculling a bottle of booze.
The skull and cross bones are underlined by the words: "Time Flies When You're Having Rum".
There are photos and other pirate memorabilia scattered around the office.
Attached to the office are two state-of-the-art suites where Pirates Three editors Stephen Rivkin and Craig Wood are piecing the film together.
Bruckheimer invites his guests into Rivkin's suite, makes sure everyone has a chair and begins the preview session.
There is a large high definition flat screen TV on the far wall and below it are two computer screens.
One computer screen is filled with files containing scenes for the movie. With one click a scene appears on the big flat screen.
The other computer screen shows the movie footage.
To the left is another TV screen matching the footage on the large flat screen TV.
"A lot of the visual effects shots aren't finished so you'll see things that don't look right, but they'll soon be perfect," Bruckheimer cautions before asking Rivkin to show the first scene.
For an hour Bruckheimer introduces the eight scenes, which include elaborate battle scenes, humourous lines by Depp & Co and complex special effects that appeared to be perfect.
"I have a proposal for you!" Rush, who returns as the infamous pirate, Captain Barbossa, asks newcomer, Hong Kong action film star Yun-Fat Chow, who plays a Singapore-based pirate lord, in one scene.
It would spoil the plot to reveal the details of Capt Barbossa's proposal.
Pirates Three continues the love triangle between Depp's Capt Jack Sparrow, Knightley's Elizabeth Swann and Bloom's Will Turner.
"If you make your choices alone how can I trust you?" Turner pleads with Swann at one point.
"You can't," a defiant Swann replies.
The second Pirates' movie introduced the Kraken, a giant octopus, and in the new film audiences meet the Calypso.
Bruckheimer declined to show the last 40 minutes of the movie.
"It's a little teaser," he explained at the end of the sneak peek session.
"But, the last 40 minutes are some of the most exciting filmmaking I've ever seen.
"It's just spectacular what Gore has achieved."
Critics and audiences had complained the second Pirates film ended abruptly, but Bruckheimer said the storylines of the first two will be resolved in the third.
"Everything is tied up," he said. Bruckheimer confirmed Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, who was the inspiration for Depp's mumbling and stumbling performance as Capt Sparrow, would make a cameo appearance.
"He has a cameo, but it's a very important cameo," Bruckheimer said.
"We had to find three or four days when Keith wasn't touring.
"At the time we were filming this he was touring around Europe, so we found a little break in September, he had some time and we grabbed him and got him to the set."
Richards shot the cameo a few months after he fell out of a coconut tree while holidaying in Fiji, but Bruckheimer said the veteran rocker lapped up his time on the LA set with Depp.
"He loved it," Bruckheimer said.
"He had a ball. He didn't leave the set even when he wasn't shooting."
There are more than 2,000 special effects shots in Pirates Three.
Bruckheimer said technology had advanced so quickly fans will notice improvements in the special effects between the new film and Pirates Two.
Davy Jones, the mythical pirate whose face is part human and part squid, will once again make audiences squirm.
"Davy Jones is even better in this one," Bruckheimer said.
"The images are better.
"The technology makes it more real."
The technical wizards were pushed to create one of the film's moredramatic scenes, which involved a sea battle within a giant whirlpool.
"You would never have been able to do that sequence prior because water is the hardest to recreate digitally," Bruckheimer said.
To shoot the scene Bruckheimer and his crew hired one of the largest airplane hangars in the world, a building on the outskirts of Los Angeles that once housed Howard Hughes' giant sea plane, the Spruce Goose.
The one scene took eight weeks to film.
"We built three ships in that hangar and did a lot of that sequence there," Bruckheimer said.
There are rumours of a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie and while each chapter makes a $US1 billion ($A1.21 billion) at the box office and hundreds of millions more in DVD sales, it is probably more than speculation.
Bruckheimer, however, is adamant the series ends with the third film.
"This is the end," he said.
"This is the end of the trilogy."
Then again, that does not mean there could be a Pirates of the Caribbean spin-off, right?
"Whether there will be another movie depends on whether we can create something new and different, but this is the end," he adds.
"Everything is tied up at the end of this movie."
Bruckheimer is the master of the spin-off.
Along with his $US14 billion ($A16.96 billion) in movie revenue, he dominates TV, with the CSI TV franchise as well as top-rating TV series Without a Trace, Cold Case and Amazing Race.
He successfully spun off CSI: Crime Scene Investigation into CSI: Miami and CSI: NY.
As adamant as Bruckheimer is about no loose ends left for audiences at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean: At Word's End, he admits the script does leave the possibility of a spin-off.
Depp and Bloom have said they will hang up their swords after Pirates Three, but some other characters may live on.
"This is the end, but whether one of the characters or a couple of the characters continue on, it's a possibility," Bruckheimer concedes.
"Certainly, there is a moment at the end of the film there is a hope that something else might happen.
"There's a little string that goes off. There's something new."
Australian audiences can look for that "string" when Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End opens in Australia May 24.
30th April 2007 11:36 AM
open-g
There's a new trailer out, but don't get excited - No Keith in sight
This featurette is focused on the characters.
NEW CLIPS, NEW SCENES, NEW INTERVIEWS
"Time Flies When You're Having Rum"
[Edited by open-g]
30th April 2007 11:55 AM
glencar
I see an Oscar in Keith's near-future!
30th April 2007 01:58 PM
Martha
"He has a cameo, but it's a very important cameo," Bruckheimer said.
This sounds bigger than Oscar. Maybe he'll get the Irving Thalberg award!
30th April 2007 11:50 PM
rogerriffin
quote:glencar wrote:
I see an Oscar in Keith's near-future!
Don´t say it to Mick please
1st May 2007 12:53 PM
voodoopug
quote:Martha wrote:
"He has a cameo, but it's a very important cameo," Bruckheimer said.
This sounds bigger than Oscar. Maybe he'll get the Irving Thalberg award!
possible "knighthood"?
1st May 2007 10:27 PM
glencar
You've been gone too long...
7th May 2007 06:41 PM
open-g
Keith will be walking the red carpet on 19th of May.
I guess the Disney suits mellowed on the ash-snorting crema-, I mean, moratorium.
7th May 2007 09:28 PM
open-g
quote:Mel Belli wrote:
I guess the Disney suits mellowed on the ash-snorting crema-, I mean, moratorium.
Yeah, I guess talk is cheap in Disneyland
8th May 2007 12:53 PM
Joey
quote:glencar wrote:
I see an Oscar in Keith's near-future!
I am now so excited that I am typing this with my nipples .
9th May 2007 08:23 PM
gimmekeef
Was Keith in Spiderman 3 ?...oooops wrong blockbuster!
9th May 2007 09:19 PM
open-g
quote:gimmekeef wrote:
Was Keith in Spiderman 3 ?...oooops wrong blockbuster!
sure he was...
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