Johnny Depp Injured In Australia; ‘Pirates’ Captain Headed Back To U.S. For Surgery

By Eric Eisenberg
This past weekend was evidently not the greatest one for the production of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. As we reported earlier today, the film was first interrupted when a man wearing pirate regalia came on to the set waving a knife around, and now reports are coming in saying that Johnny Depp has injured his hand to the extent that it will require surgery.

Unfortunately, we not only are lacking any details regarding exactly what happened to the star, but there is also conflicting information out on the web as to exactly where the injury occurred. Variety's article about the matter says that Johnny Depp was not working at the time of the incident, but The Hollywood Reporter says that he was on set at the time. The movie is currently filming on Australia's Gold Coast, and has been doing so for the last few weeks.

The good news in all of this is that it doesn't look like Johnny Depp's injury is going to throw the Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales off of its schedule. The actor will be flying back to the United States to get surgery on his hand, but the production will continue to shoot and work around Depp's absence by working on other material. Disney has no plans to change the feature's release date, which isn't too surprising given that the film is still more than two years away from hitting theaters.

Obviously, things could be a lot worse. Many of you will remember the long stretch of time last summer when Harrison Ford's on-set injury caused the production of Star Wars: The Force Awakens to not only morph its schedule, but actually go on hiatus for a couple of weeks. Of course, even that much more severe case didn't cause the studio to react and change plans, and that particular film is still on schedule to come out on December 17th.

 In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, directed by Espen Sandberg and Joachim Ronning, Johnny Depp returns as Captain Jack Sparrow, though this new sequel once again finds him facing off against a brand new antagonist. Javier Bardem will be playing the role of Captain Salazar, an old nemesis of Captain Jack's who wants to see the death of every single pirate at sea. In order to survive a terrible on-slaught, the only option Captain Jack has is to try and find the legendary Trident of Poseidon, which would allow him full power over the seas. In addition to Depp, the feature will also see the return of Geoffrey Rush, Kevin R. McNally, and Stephen Graham, and feature franchise newcomers Kaya Scodelario, Brenton Thwaites, and Golshifteh Farahani.