At World’s End: Introduction

Filed under At World's End Production Notes by on April 26, 2011 at 3:20 pm {no comments}

Keira Knightley and Johnny Depp

Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley and Geoffrey Rush reunite in Walt Disney Pictures’ / Jerry Bruckheimer Films’ “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” an all new epic tale in the blockbuster series chronicling the fantastical adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow, Captain Barbossa, Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann. This time around, the quartet is joined by international superstar Chow Yun-Fat as Captain Sao Feng, the pirate lord of Singapore.

Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Gore Verbinski, Captain Jack and the others set sail on the spectacular new adventure, once again laced with lashing of rollicking and irreverent humor, which takes them into new realms of adventure and fantasy. Their two previous “Pirates” adventures smashed records around the world, with “The Curse of the Black Pearl” garnering more than $650 million worldwide, a figure nearly doubled by “Dead Man’s Chest,” which became the third highest-grossing movie in international box office history with more than $1-billion, and a gigantic domestic take of $423,315,812, the sixth highest position in history.

The writers of “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” are Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, co-writers of the first film and its follow up “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” also have such hits on their resume as “Aladdin” and “Shrek.” The film is based on characters created by Elliott & Rossio and Stuart Beattie and Jay Wolpert, and based on Walt Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean. The film’s executive producers are Mike Stenson, Chad Oman, Bruce Hendricks and Eric McLeod.

Johnny Depp has become one of the world’s most popular and acclaimed actors, with a hugely versatile range of performances marking his outstanding career. He was nominated for Best Actor Academy Awards for both “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” and “Finding Neverland.” Depp’s extensive motion picture credits since the late 1980s have included “Cry-Baby,” “Platoon,” “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?,” “Ed Wood,” “Benny & Joon,” “Edward Scissorhands,” “Don Juan DeMarco,” “Donnie Brasco,” “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” “Sleepy Hollow,” “Chocolat,” “Blow,” “Once Upon A Time in Mexico,” “Secret Window,” “The Libertine,” “Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride” and Burton’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

Orlando Bloom became a major international star with his portrayal of Legolas in Peter Jackson’s award-winning “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy after co-starring in Jerry Bruckheimer’s production of “Black Hawk Down,” directed by Ridley Scott. Since then, the increasingly popular actor has starred in Wolfgang Petersen’s “Troy,” Scott’s “Kingdom of Heaven” and Cameron Crowe’s “Elizabethtown.”

Keira Knightley was first brought to the attention of international audiences in the sleeper hit “Bend It Like Beckham.” In addition to “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” she was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress for “Pride & Prejudice,” and also starred in “Love, Actually,” Jerry Bruckheimer’s production of “King Arthur,” and the upcoming “Atonement,” “Silk” and “The Best Time of Our Lives.”

Geoffrey Rush won an Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award for his captivating performance in HBO Films’ “The Life and Death of Peter Sellers,” in which he portrayed the title character. He first became internationally known for his starring role in Scott Hicks’ feature film “Shine,” which garnered him an Academy Award for Best Actor as piano prodigy David Helfgott. He also won a Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Film Critics’ Circle of Australia, Broadcast Film Critics, AFI and New York and Los Angeles Film Critics’ Awards for the film. Rush also received an Academy Award nomination for his performances in Philip Kaufman’s “Quills,” and both Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for “Shakespeare in Love.”

Chow Yun-Fat exploded into international stardom after more than a decade as Hong Kong’s most popular leading man in a memorable series of portrayals that included director John Woo’s now classic films “A Better Tomorrow,” “The Killer,” “Once A Thief” and “Hard-Boiled.” Chow has also starred in Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “Anna and the King” and most recently, Zhang Yimou’s “Curse of the Golden Flower.”

With only seven features to his credit thus far, Gore Verbinski’s highly acclaimed films have totaled more than $2-billion worldwide. His films have included the immensely successful “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” the chilling horror film “The Ring” and the acclaimed drama “The Weather Man,” starring Nicolas Cage.

Jerry Bruckheimer holds an undisputed position as one of the most successful producers in both motion pictures and television. First in partnership with Don Simpson, and then as the chief of Jerry Bruckheimer Films and Television, he has produced an unprecedented string of worldwide smashes, hugely impacting not only the industry, but mass culture as well. Bruckheimer’s films have included “American Gigolo,” “Flashdance,” “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Top Gun,” “Beverly Hills Cop II,” “Days of Thunder,” “Bad Boys,” “Dangerous Minds,” “Crimson Tide,” “The Rock,” “Con Air,” “Armageddon,” “Enemy of the State,” “Gone in 60 Seconds,” “Coyote Ugly,” “Remember the Titans,” “Pearl Harbor,” “Black Hawk Down,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” “Bad Boys II,” “Veronica Guerin,” “King Arthur,” “National Treasure,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” and the upcoming “National Treasure: Book of Secrets.”

On television, Jerry Bruckheimer had an unprecedented 10 television series airing simultaneously in the Fall season 2005, a record in the medium for an individual producer. JBTV’s series have included “C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation” and its spinoffs “C.S.I.: Miami,” “C.S.I.: NY,” “Without a Trace,” “Cold Case,” and “The Amazing Race.”

Jerry Bruckheimer Films and Television have been honored with 39 Academy Award nominations, six Oscars, eight Grammy Award nominations, five Grammys, 23 Golden Globe nominations, four Golden Globes, 53 Emmy nominations, 14 Emmys, 16 People’s Choice nominations, 11 People’s Choice Awards, numerous MTV Awards, including one for Best Picture of the Decade for “Beverly Hills Cop” and 14 Teen Choice Awards.

Along with Depp, Rush, Bloom and Knightley, cast members returning to “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” include Stellan Skarsgard as Bootstrap Bill Turner, Bill Nighy as Davy Jones, Jack Davenport as Admiral James Norrington, Jonathan Pryce as Elizabeth’s father, Governor Weatherby Swann, Naomie Harris as Tia Dalma, Tom Hollander as Lord Cutler Beckett, Kevin R. McNally as Joshamee Gibbs, Lee Arenberg and Mackenzie Crook as Pintel and Ragetti, David Bailie as Cotton, Martin Klebba as Marty and, from the first film, Giles New and Angus Barnett as thick-skulled British soldiers Murtogg and Mullroy. Vanessa Branch and Lauren Maher return for a third time as Jack Sparrow’s favorite Tortuga wenches, Giselle and Scarlett. New cast additions include Reggie Lee (“The Fast and the Furious”) as Tai Huang, Captain Sao Feng’s lieutenant, and a diverse group of international actors portraying the Pirate Lords, including the legendary Keith Richards as Captain Teague, Keeper of the Code.

A large contingent of the award-winning “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” creative team reunites for “At World’s End,” including director of photography Darius Wolski, production designer Rick Heinrichs (Oscar nominated for “Dead Man’s Chest’), costume designer Penny Rose, supervising art director John Dexter, set decorator Cheryl Carasik (who shared the nomination with Heinrichs for “Dead Man’s Chest”), film editors Craig Wood and Stephen Rivkin, visual effects supervisors John Knoll and Charles Gibson (both of whom won Academy Awards for their work, along with ILM’s Hal Hickel, on “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest”); special effects coordinator Allen Hall (who shared the “Dead Man’s Chest” Oscar with Knoll, Gibson and Hickel); stunt coordinator / second unit director George Marshall Ruge; three time Academy Award-winning key makeup artist Ve Neill and key hair stylist Martin Samuel, both of whom shared an Oscar nomination for “The Curse of the Black Pearl”; and composer Hans Zimmer. Joining this world-class team on the new film is Academy Award-winning special effects coordinator John Frazier (“Spider-Man 2”)

Next Page: Short Synopsis

Some New Faces Aboard

Filed under At World's End Production Notes by on April 26, 2011 at 1:57 pm {no comments}

Chow Yun-Fat as Captain Sao Feng in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

In addition to the stars already established in the two previous films, Bruckheimer and Verbinski brought some special new faces aboard for “At World’s End,” most notably international superstar Chow Yun-Fat, cast as the smart if duplicitous Singaporean pirate, Captain Sao Feng. “You want to hire enormously talented actors who are at the top of their game,” says Bruckheimer, “and that’s the definition of Chow Yun-Fat. He’s a masterful actor, an international star, and a perfect addition to the trilogy.”

“They were all pirates in reality, and betrayal was normal,” notes Chow of his character. “Therefore, Sao Feng treats it as a business transaction. There is no good or evil in the pirate world, and Sao Feng is neither a good person nor a villain. They are all pirates, and that’s how pirates are.” In terms of the films’ international appeal, Chow explains, “I think everyone has a fantasy to do things that cannot be controlled by parents or the authorities. Pirates are rebels, so especially in the minds of young people, the movie has global appeal.”

For such grizzled “Pirates” veterans as Lee Arenberg and Mackenzie Crook, who play the tag-team duo of Pintel and Ragetti, “At World’s End” presented another opportunity to expand their characters. “In the first film we were pretty vicious,” says Crook. “We shot the servant in the governor’s house straight away, really nasty, cutthroat villains. In the second film, we lightened up a bit and became a real double-act. But I think that Gore, Ted and Terry were keen to keep a vicious streak in us, because we’re pirates when you come down to it, so we can’t always just be goofing around. So I have a good kill count in `At World’s End.’ I think I dispatch three or four souls.”

“We were funny bad guys in the first movie and funny good guys in the second one,” adds Arenberg. “And from here on out we’re funny good guys no matter which team we’re on. We certainly don’t gain any intelligence. I always say that Pintel and Ragetti still share half a brain.”

Next Page – Chapter 5: Every Saga Must Make a Start

Costume Designs: Dressed for Success

Filed under At World's End Production Notes by on April 26, 2011 at 11:30 am {no comments}

Costume Designs: Dressed for Success

Costume designer Penny Rose, who amply demonstrated her prodigious talents on both “The Curse of the Black Pearl” and “Dead Man’s Chest,” went beyond the Farthest Gate on “At World’s End,” helping to extend the pirate world well beyond that depicted in the first two films. “We’d done Caribbean pirates to death, and now we were going to have some new ingredients,” explains Rose. “We got a lot of pictorial and editorial information about piracy in different parts of the world. I prepare the films in London, which is a very good base to do that kind of research.”

Rose and her crew literally combed the world for fabrics and materials from which to create the thousands of costumes required for “At World’s End.” “I spend three or four weeks intensively shopping at textile fairs, or with antique textile dealers,” she says. “I go to Rome, Madrid, Paris, New York, and buy myself a great, huge store of stuff. Then it travels everywhere we go… we have workrooms on all of the islands and locations where we shoot, so that everything is within the room. It’s like I have a toyshop here, and when the actors come in I can offer them options and let them choose, because I like everything here anyway. It’s really important for the actors to become involved.

“The moment in the dressing room with the actors is the high point of the work. Far more important and exhilarating to me than how much money the film makes is to send the actors away having visually found the character they’re playing. That’s what I’m here to do.”

For “At World’s End,” the story and character developments go hand-in-hand with their costume changes. Except, of course, for Captain Jack Sparrow. “Jack can never change,” insists Rose. “He doesn’t have a closet full of clothes. He is Captain Jack, and the clothes make the man. Same with Geoffrey Rush’s Captain Barbossa. So in terms of the two of them, it was simply a question of remaking more, more, more, which was in itself quite a challenge because it was difficult to find the original textiles.

“For example,” Rose continues, “Captain Jack’s sash was made by a hill tribe in Turkey, and I had to send someone to Turkey to persuade that tribe to weave me some more of the sash material. Because we tried to print it on old French hemp and linen sheets, but it just wasn’t the same. So the hill tribe people made me another hundred yards.

“We see a more confident and powerful Will Turner and a new and exciting Elizabeth Swann,” informs Rose. “We’ve given Orlando an embossed buckskin vest, a dark, wine-colored shirt and a beautiful, mud cloth coat. I think it’s important that in the third film, you’re slightly confused as to whose side Will is on, so we needed to help his character look a little bit darker, metaphorically. He has a rather wonderful dark, dark midnight blue coat made out of mudcloth, which looks very romantic and mysterious.

“Keira gets to wear a Chinese courtesan costume, with a heavily jeweled and ornate headdress and matching collar piece, a tasseled vest and a completely embroidered silk gown with what would probably have been a skirt, but which, for practical reasons, we turned into a culotte so that when she gets to the fighting sequences, we could lose the vest and the other accessories and go straight into action mode.”

Rose also designed an astonishing costume for the legendary Chow Yun-Fat, who portrays Captain Sao Feng, which weighed a grand total of 35 pounds in its entirety. “Yun-Fat is the Laurence Olivier of the East, and it took less than 10 minutes of the fitting to know that this fellow really knows his stuff,” says Rose. “Yun-Fat knows how to envelope himself into the character, he knew we were here to give him the visual, and he did everything possible to help us. It very quickly evolved into a joint decision-making process about what’s happening in that mirror, how we could progress and make it a bigger and better work. Chow Yun-Fat has a powerful presence in person, but we needed this Chinese pirate captain to be terrifying.”

Rose also had an opportunity to design a costume for Bill Nighy in a flashback scene in which the audience can see what Davy Jones looked like as a man “before he was under the sea for years and years and barnacled up. We finally get Bill out of those gray CGI reference pajamas, for which he’s very, very grateful,” she says with a laugh. “We really set to and made a fabulous costume for Bill, because he was so relieved to be out of gray. I bought some linen damask from a mill in Umbria that we hadn’t used yet, and dyed it beautifully. We just thought that since Bill is a very elegant man, Davy Jones could, perhaps, in his past have been quite a snappy dresser. So we made him a square cut coat from that damask linen.”

For the film, Rose also designed costumes for buccaneers from all corners of the globe: Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Primary among this group are the Pirate Lords who convene in Shipwreck Cove, and chief among them are the Keeper of the Code, Captain Teague…played by the artist also known as Keith Richards. “I was fortunate enough to give Mr. Richards a fitting in July 2005, when he was in Los Angeles just prior to the band rehearsals,” recalls Rose. “And it so happened that it was a week when Johnny Depp was not working, so I asked him to come with me, which he very kindly did. I must say, it was fairly hilarious to see the two of them together, because once Keith was dressed in costume, you really could believe that the two of them were related.

“It was a bizarre moment,” continues Rose, “because how often do you get to costume a rock icon? (Well, actually, Rose has done it before… for Bob Geldof in “Pink Floyd: The Wall,” and Madonna in “Evita”). But Keith was dying to be a pirate. I mean, he wanted to go out that night dressed in the pirate costume! So I think he really enjoyed the process.

“Every single one of the Pirate Lords had a different identity based upon where they’d come from-China, India, France, Spain, Africa-plus their entourages. All of the textiles I used were specifically different in each group.”

Next Page – Chapter 13: The Pirate Makers