AustinAg2K said:
This is definitely a post for the politics board, but it'll be interesting to see what sort of cast they go with for something like this. Bob Iger had made comments recently that imply they are going to step back on DEI. I don't remember the exact quote, but it was something like, "We we've been focused to much of making am impact and not enough on just being entertaining." I don't follow the industry super close, but I don't remember any major announcements at the level of something like Pirates since he came back. Everything coming out now was in production before he took back over. It'll be interesting to see if he really does reduce the amount of DEI.
Regardless, this movie is going to fail unless Johnny is in it. It's going to be very hard to do a Pirates movie without Jack Sparrow, and no one is going to want to try to take that role.
Again, I was told they're going with a black female lead, but casting a black female lead doesn't necessarily mean it's automatically part of some "DEI" hire/initiative.
Not only can that be a problematic precedent to set, if we start labeling/assuming every non-white person who is cast as the lead in a major blockbuster franchise is part of some "DEI" agenda, but you also have to look at it in contrast to the first five movies and not necessarily in contrast to what Iger has said. All five Pirates movies have featured white leads and white love interests, save for Penelope Cruz in the fourth movie, so maybe it's simply time to mix it up
creatively and focus not on predominantly white British characters yet again, and instead let the main character be someone who's actually native to region, and of the predominant race of the region.
All that said, again, things could have changed between when I was told this info and now. That, and despite the white leads, the Pirates movies - at least the sequels -
have already been pretty diverse, so outside of going with a different race for the lead I don't know how much more Disney can potentially force things in that regard.