So this article confirms that to one extent or other, PotC4 does look to be based on the Tim Powers book On Stranger Tides. Powers’ attitude? Much more realistic and healthy than my own, as I still cringe to see a single on of Powers’ characters usurped by Barbossa or Sparrow. But as some readers pointed out, you can’t judge a movie until you see the movie, which is true.
I still find Disney’s need to harvest pre-existing texts as a bad sign – it could well mean they’re looking for a short-cut fix to not having any story ideas of their own. OR, maybe they’ll spin gold out of it – I’ve certainly been wrong before.
Think of it this way. The more stories they take to be used in the movie means less writers they need to hired. The less writers get hired means the less people Disney has to fire after the movie is done.
Despite their love cutesy movies, they are evil monsters that are really just out for the all mighty dollar.
Or, look at it this way… Maybe they had considered an idea about the fountain of youth, and knew there was a story existing with a character named Jack that was searching for the Fountain of Youth… if they moved forward without seeking the rights, then whether they use the Power’s Book or Not they are opening themselves up to a lawsuit. Maybe they read his book and thought the best part was the Fountain… but don’t want to use any of the rest of it… they STILL need to make sure they get the rights. It seems most likely, they liked some concepts and the title, and bought the rights so they could use anything from it they wanted. Either way, we really won’t know until the camera’s roll and the movie opens. I’m hopeful.
While screenwriter Terry Rossio told Empire Magazine that Disney’s forthcoming swashbuckler flick will not simply be an adaptation of Powers’s novel, he conceded that “there are enough common elements to think that the book had to be optioned to us to reasonably proceed along [the Fountain of Youth] storyline…It just turns out that to do that story you would need that book.”
In other words, Disney bought the rights to the book because it was similar to what they were going to do and they didn’t want to take any chances…especially since someone is still trying to sue them over the first movie.