Pirates of the Caribbean

This article is about the franchise. For other, more specific uses, see Pirates of the Caribbean (disambiguation). For historical parties of the Caribbean Sea, see Piracy in the Caribbean.

File:Disneyland Pirates of the Caribbean Poster.png

Poster for the original Pirates of the Caribbean attraction at Disneyland

Pirates of the Caribbean is a franchise that began as an attraction at Disney theme parks and has evolved to include a series of highly successful films and spinoffs. As of August 2006, Pirates of the Caribbean attractions can be found at four Disney theme parks and their related films have grossed more than US$1 billion worldwide.

Theme park origins

Main article: Pirates of the Caribbean (theme park ride)

Pirates of the Caribbean was envisioned in the late 1950s as a walk-through wax museum at Disneyland that would have featured depictions of real pirates from history in static scenes. Instead, Disney Imagineers utilized the technological breakthroughs achieved in the company's four pavilions at the 1964-65 World's Fair to transform the attraction into a rollicking boat ride through vivid environments filled with fictional Audio-Animatronic pirates sacking a Caribbean seaport. Its theme song, Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me), sets a lighthearted tone for what were seen as violent criminals historically.

The last Disney theme park attraction designed with input from Walt Disney, it opened in its original form in New Orleans Square at Disneyland on March 18, 1967. Since then, it has been replicated in different forms at three subsequent Disney theme parks — Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort (December 15, 1973), Tokyo Disneyland (April 15, 1983) and Disneyland Paris (April 12, 1992).

Films

When rumors about a possible film inspired by the attraction first surfaced in 2002, many saw the move as a simple ploy by Disney to promote one of its theme park rides. Additionally, many were concerned that pirate films such as Cutthroat Island and films based on Disney attractions such as The Country Bears had not done well at the box office. Nevertheless, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, starring Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, opened on July 9, 2003 and eventually grossed US$653 million worldwide, becoming one of the top twenty-five global box office earners of all time.

The triumph of the first film led to the production of two additional films with the same core cast. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest opened in July 2006 and quickly broke several records, including that for the quickest $US100 million box office gross. A third film, whose title has not been announced officially by Disney, was produced concurrently with Dead Man's Chest and is set to be released in late May 2007.

See also: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, and Pirates of the Caribbean 3

Video games

Originally entitled Sea Dogs II, Pirates of the Caribbean was released in 2003 by Bethesda Softworks to coincide with the release of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Although it had no relation to the film or its characters, it was the first of several games to be inspired by the attraction.

Disney later moved to develop Pirates of the Caribbean Multiplayer Mobile for mobile phones and a massively multiplayer online role playing game entitled Pirates of the Caribbean Online, which will debut in 2007.

Adaptations

Several additional works have been inspired by the original attraction:

• A computer game (by Akella), loosely connected to the plot of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

• Port Royal, a world based on the Pirates of the Caribbean films, appears in the Square Enix video game Kingdom Hearts II.

• In 2000, Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for Buccaneer Gold, opened at DisneyQuest at Florida's Walt Disney World Resort. The attraction allows up to five players to board a virtual pirate ship and attempt to sink other ships with water cannons.

• Ron Gilbert often has been quoted that the Monkey Island computer game series was inspired by the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, although this has been refuted. Within Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge is a key-carrying dog named Walt, whose name may be an homage to Walt Disney.

• Pirates of the Caribbean was the name of a boat participating in the 2005-2006 Volvo Ocean Race.