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Monday
06Oct2008

Depp's 'Pirates' Booty: $56 Million

DateMonday, October 6, 2008 at 2:00PM
Johnny Depp is now officially the King of Hollywood. How strange it is to think that six or seven years ago, studios didn't seem to want him in their movies. He was odd, quirky, and he didn't draw audiences. Then came Captain Jack Sparrow and the rest is history. Two Oscar nominations and three Golden Globe nominations in five years, a billion dollars at the box office in the same time frame...it's staggering.

And now, you can call him the highest-paid actor in the world.

Depp has received the largest upfront salary in movie history to return as Captain Jack for the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film - $56 million. A source told AOL, "It's a hell of a lot of money for one movie but there’s only one man who can play Captain Jack Sparrow - and that's Johnny Depp."

We've heard that Keira Knightley won't be back, and that means Orlando Bloom probably won't be, either, so we can only wonder what the structure of the fourth Pirates will look like. Will Geoffrey Rush come back? Will director Gore Verbinski? I'd say the director is a bit of a long shot, because he's off doing new projects, but I think Disney would be loony to pay Depp that kind of money and not secure Geoffrey Rush. They worked very well together in the trilogy.

With $56 million (plus whatever is left to scavenge off the back end), Depp can skip buying single islands and purchase an entire archipelago if he so chooses. Or better yet, he can just buy Wachovia.

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AuthorColin Boyd | | in , , , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | Comment4 Comments |

Reader Comments (4)

At first I thought, crap another way for them to ruin the series. But if we cut back on the characters and have more of good'ole Jack, then we could be onto something. Depp deserves the pay, that being said, I hope he continues to make movies because apparently he never has to again.

Monday, October 6, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterOrinn

one pirates too far captain jack fatigue had set in about 2hours before the end of worlds end also hes going to be closing in on 50 without keira and especially orlando i think it wont work - though last time johhny did say he wanted to do a buddy movie with orlando asked why everyone else gets to kiss him why not me s

Tuesday, October 7, 2008 | Unregistered Commenterrparker

with that kind of money i hope he gets back to the roles he used to take

Tuesday, October 7, 2008 | Unregistered Commenterfaulty-logic

Well done negotiating, Johnny!

A lot of money but it's nice to see it go to the creative people rather than studios and investors.

Personally, I'd rather see increases in writers' salaries because you can't make good movies without good writing.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterLengthy Johnson

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