Pirates 4 gets name, release date

Arr, I spy a cash cow ripe fer milkin' on the horizon, matey! The fourth instalment of the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise is setting sail, with a new subtitle, a release date and a possible storyline. Imagine!

The new title for Pirates Of The Caribbean 4 has been revealed at a Disney fan convention in the US. Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides was also given a release date of summer 2011, which is pretty much, like, two years away.

Depp will reprise his role as Captain Russell Brand, but Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley are not expected to figure. Director Gore Verbinski opted to pass on Pirates 4, meaning a high calibre director like Martin Scorsese or David Fincher may step into the fold. No, wait - I mean the guy who directed Chicago. (*facepalm*)

Anyone who sat through the last two Pirates movies might not be thrilled at the prospect of another (seriously, how confusing does a movie about Pirates really have to be?) but Disney have promised to strip the franchise down to its basic elements - just Jack and a few hundred million dollars of SFX, then.

Interestingly, keen-eyed followers have discovered that there is already a pirate novel that exists called On Stranger Tides, by author Tim Powers (Amazon link here). It also features a character called Jack, who's searching for the Fountain of Youth - the treasure our Sparrow sets sail for at the end of the last movie.

Have Disney bought the rights to Powers' book and simply lifted the story right out? Kudos if they have - anything's got to be better than hiring screenwriters who wrote the script as they were filming it like last time. This literally happened, by the way.

Prepare for Johnny Depp's incessant mincing in summer 2011; the new logo unveiled at the D23 Fan Expo is below.