Walt Disney Pictures has long been the king of animation, but with Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, it finally managed to conquer the live-action world. It wasn’t the first Disney film based on an attraction from the parks, bafflingly enough, but with the help of producer Jerry Bruckheimer, it was (and kind of still is) the only one to justify such a ludicrous stunt.
The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is a flagship property of the Disney brand to this day. It generated billions for the company and, perhaps more crucially, turned a whole generation of disillusioned teens into Disney fans for life. When the franchise seemed to come to an end in 2007, many naturally wondered if anything could step up to replace the franchise and all his supernatural swashbuckling. Fortunately, Bruckheimer had been quietly tinkering away at a potential successor for years. His production company acquired the rights to Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time in 2003, and while Pirates of the Caribbean was conquering the box office, Bruckheimer labored with Disney to wrangle this video game into a viable narrative.
