Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott talk about peg legs, patches, parrots and the possibility of Pirates 4.   

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is the third movie in the popular Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, in which Johnny Depp stars as Captain Jack Sparrow, the flamboyant and perpetually pickled pirate with the loosely tuned moral compass.

Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott wrote all three scripts in the Pirates trilogy, as well as Shrek and Aladdin, amongst others. The original idea for all three Pirates movies came from the Disney ride of the same name. “The ride itself has cursed treasure and skeletal pirates,” points out Elliott. They also drew some inspiration from the old classic Treasure Island.

But mostly, Elliott and Rossio wanted to do a pirate movie that incorporated the supernatural lore of the sea. And one that worked. “If you wanted to do a 'movie about pirates',” says Elliott, “they can all have scurvy and rickets and syphilis. But we wanted to do a 'pirate movie,' and that somehow meant giving a modern audience license to accept and enjoy that romanticized image.”

So how do you do that? “By introducing supernatural aspects,” says Elliott. “We’re not trying to pretend it’s real, folks. They’re skeletons, okay?!” Adds Rossio: “Once the audience is buying into sword-fighting skeletons, they’ll accept the patch.”

In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Rossio and Elliott wanted to push the envelope of character development. Says Rossio: “In Pirates I, the Jack Sparrow character--you like him and kind of presume that he’s a good guy underneath it all. Maybe.” But in the sequel, it's another story. “In Pirates II, the idea was what if Jack Sparrow’s agenda was actually at odds with our other protagonists?" explains Rossio. "How would you feel about the character if he is doing the exact same things, but he’s doing them against their agenda?”

Another difference in writing The Curse of the Black Pearl and Dead Man’s Chest is that for the latter, Rossio and Elliott already knew who most of their cast would be—and already knew what they could do with the roles. “When we were working on the first one, we just wanted to do the movie. We knew that Johnny Depp had expressed some interest in the idea, but hadn’t committed,” explains Elliott. “We thought, okay, we’re going to do the pirate movie we want. The fact that Johnny Depp is interested gives us license to write a movie that Johnny Depp is going to want to be in. He’s a very smart, somewhat eccentric human being. That gave us license to take the character even further than we would have anyway.”

Having seen the completed version of the first Pirates movie was both a blessing and a curse for the writers when it came time to start the sequel. “Johnny’s performance…I could not imagine that performance. That’s why he’s Johnny Depp—he could imagine that and make it work,” praises Elliott. “But I had to actually stop writing lines as Johnny Depp delivered them and had to write lines for Jack Sparrow that Johnny Depp would then deliver.”

On the whole, though, having worked with the cast before made it easier for Elliott and Rossio to embark upon the second script. “We can throw them things and be confident they can pull them off,” says Elliott. “In Dead Man’s Chest, there’s a whole storyline with Elizabeth and Jack, particularly the conclusion, that if we didn’t know that we had Keira, I don’t know that we necessarily would have gone that way. But the fact that we had Keira made us confident. Made us not worry that she could make it work, and that you would understand why Elizabeth did what she did. Not lose sympathy for her, but definitely be questioning her choice."

Dead Man’s Chest clearly paves the way for the third movie of the trilogy, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, which is slated to open on Memorial Day weekend 2007. On that subject, Elliott and Rossio are keeping pretty vague. “I think At Worlds End is a fitting and epic conclusion to our trilogy. It ties a lot of the themes and ties off all the characters’ stories,” says Elliott. Adds Rossio: “The screenwriting is amazing.”

Oh, and as for the possibility of a Pirates IV? Don't totally rule it out. “I think people will invariably talk about a fourth movie,” says Rossio, “but it could happen or it couldn’t. It’s like waiting for the next Star Wars movie: It’s always possible. But right now, this could be it. This could be the last that we see of Jack Sparrow in the foreseeable future.”

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is currently in theaters everywhere.

Check out ReelzChannel.com's Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End page for clips from the film and more!