Jack's Pack is back

"My favorite is the one who is almost a lobster," announces Jerry Bruckheimer, proffering a picture of a bright-green pirate coated in barnacles and sporting a large pincer instead of a left hand."Although we do have Siamese twims, a shellman whose face can retract and one with a hammerhead."
We are midway through the year long shoot for "Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest", and where once there was a skeletal crew, there is now well, a fishy one. "They've been under the sea for hundreds of years," explains Bruckheimer as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "And they're led by Davey Jones, who is played by Bill Nighy, back to claim Captain Jack's soul."
(FYI: He's got long slimy tentacles for a beard.)
The idea of visiting this set may inspire one with visions of golden sands and crystal blue waters. However, Empire is currently sitting in a car park. A stroll away, on a sizable Los Angeles sound stage, lurks a Singapore back alley that sprawls out into a warren of huts and bridges set on stilts over a large tank. There, all hell is breaking loose in a bathhouse but we're getting ahead of ourselves, for this is a scene from Pirates 3, about which Empire's lips are sealed.
"This is the biggest undertaking I've ever done," admits Bruckheimer, "doing two movies back to back." And happily returning trio of heroes, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, it has become a little confusing at times.
"Hugely," sighs Knightley. "Before I left we were only doing 2. Now we we're doing 3, and then we're swapping back to 2.
In a way it feels like one big film rather than two seperate films." which is entirely the point.
This is not two sequels but one in two parts. Actually according to the producer, they will complete a fully formed trilogy.
"We've created what we see as a full story," Bruckheimer confirms. "Everything in the second or third movies relates to the first. It has a real arc."
For instance Jack's tattoo from the East India Company evolves into a scurrilous organisation turning up at Port Royal to eradicate pirates and anyone connected to them. " Ther's a line in the first movie," adds Bruckheimer: 'Oh, I see you've never been to Singapore.' It tells us Jack has been to Singapore and now he's back hence the exploding bathouse.
And between the films, to be released a year apart, are we to expect a cliffhanger of such daring it is enough to make even golden teeth itch?
"It will ba a very interesting ending," smiles Bruckheimer "Ther is am emotional ending to it, but ther's something else that happens that will certainly make you want to come back."

source: Empire Magazine, February 2006