Gore Verbinski leaves PIRATES franchise to work on BIOSHOCK!

By Matt Holmes / June 25, 2011

Three's the lot for director Gore Verbinski, the man behind the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise who quite rightly, has loftier ambitions than making movies with Disney swashbucklers for the rest of his career. Variety say Verbinski has left the POTC franchise to make Bioshock, the Universal Pictures adaptation of the Xbox 360 game as his next movie, based on a script by John Logan (Sweeney Todd, The Aviator). He first came attached to that project back in May of last year. The move puts a huge dent in Disney's upcoming tentpole schedule as they were expecting to make Pirates of the Caribbean 4 next Summer, with Johnny Deppalready ready to roll as the leading man. But Verbinski's pull out, which hardly can come as a shock to Disney (after all, he's attached himself to enough projects in the last year to keep him busy for a long while), may delay or permanently anchor the POTC franchise. Though the latter seems less of a possibility, because the trilogy has so far grossed $2.6 billion. Disney won't give up on that cash cow easily.

"I had a fantastic time bringing 'Pirates' to life, and I am eternally grateful to Jerry, Johnny and the rest of the creative and production team," Verbinski said. "I'm looking forward to all of us crossing paths again in the future."

Verbinski won't be an easy man to replace. He surprisingly managed to make faithful "Pirate genre" movies but also in keeping with a Disney tone and humor and at least with the first two movies, had a distinct visual style that was so much more than just putting the camera in front of Johnny Depp. By the third movie though, he seemed bored with the whole thing. I've always pointed to a moment in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End as being the moment where Verbinski had grown weary and was now "gimmicking" his movie up with references to genres that had no place in the franchise, including a bit that referenced Leone's Spaghetti Westerns. No doubt the job of making a Pirates movie with Johnny Depp will become a sought after Hollywood project, one I wouldn't have minded seeing Sam Raimi take a stab at actually. And just because I haven't so far spoken much about Bioshock, doesn't mean I'm not interested in seeing Verbinski helm it. It's a welcome step in the right direction for him, I hated the idea of seeing him fade into more Pirates sequels, with less effort and less challenges. I've never played the game but I've been impressed by it's visuals. Intrigued to see how it turns out.