Collider caught up with producer Jerry Bruckheimer who confirmed that a script for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides has been delivered, keeping the proposed production start date of spring 2010 on track.
On Stranger Tides will be based on a Tim Powers novel of the same name, which follows a sailor who falls in with Blackbeard's quest to find the Fountain of Youth. Powers told The LA Times that Disney optioned his book almost three years ago, but he was sworn to secrecy. Powers thinks that his characters won't be used in the script but the Fountain storyline will be.
I've watched all the movies several times, of course, and I think the clear thing they would use is the trip to the Fountain of Youth. My main character doesn't overlap with Jack Sparrow at all [in personality or circumstance]; they're totally different characters. I suppose they might overlap the Geoffrey Rush character Barbossa and Blackbeard. The only thing I feel certain they will hold on to is the Fountain of Youth since they telegraphed that at the end of the last movie.
Pirates screenwriter Terry Rossio confirmed to Empire that the Fountain of Youth storyline would be used, along with Blackbeard. However, that may be all that exists from Powers' book.
We wanted to do a story about Blackbeard and the Fountain of Youth, and Tim Powers wrote a book about Blackbeard and the Fountain of Youth ... it just turns out that to do that story you would need that book. It's a brilliant and Tim Powers is an amazing writer — and it's a great title. It allows us to draw material from that universe and his expertise.
I don't know if its proper to say it's based on it but there are enough common elements to think that the book had to be optioned to us to reasonably proceed along that story line.