Development Following the success of
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), the cast and crew signed on for two more
sequels to be
shot back-to-back, a practical decision on Disney's part to allow more time with the same cast and crew. Writer
Ted Elliott and
Terry Rossio decided not to make the sequels new adventures featuring the same characters, as with the
Indiana Jones and
James Bond series, but to retroactively turn
The Curse of the Black Pearl into the first of a trilogy. They wanted to explore the reality of what would happen after
Will Turner and
Elizabeth Swann's embrace at the end of the first film, and initially considered the
Fountain of Youth as the plot device. They settled on introducing
Davy Jones, the
Flying Dutchman and the
Kraken. They also introduced the historical
East India Trading Company, who for them represented a counterpoint to the themes of personal freedom represented by pirates. Planning began in June 2004, and production was much larger than
The Curse of the Black Pearl, which was only shot on location in
St. Vincent. This time, the sequels would require fully working ships, with a seaworthy
Black Pearl built over the body of the
Sunset, an unglamorous craft which once serviced oil derricks in the Gulf of Mexico constructed in Bayou La Batre, Alabama. By November, the script was still unfinished as the writers did not want director
Gore Verbinski and producer
Jerry Bruckheimer to compromise what they had written, so Verbinski worked with
James Byrkit to storyboard major sequences without need of a script, while Elliott and Rossio wrote a "preparatory" script for the crew to use before they finished the script they were happy with. By January 2005, with rising costs and no script, Disney executives threatened to cancel the film, but changed their minds. The writers would accompany the crew on location, feeling that the lateness of their rewrites would improve the spontaneity of the cast's performances. The crew spent the first shooting days at
Walt Disney Studios in Los Angeles, including the interiors of the
Black Pearl and the
Edinburgh Trader which Elizabeth stows away on, On April 18, 2005, the crew began shooting in
Dominica, a location Verbinski had selected as he felt it fitted the sense of remoteness he was looking for. The crew moved to a small island in the Bahamas called
White Cay for the beginning and end of the Isla Cruces battle, On September 18, 2005, the crew moved to
Grand Bahama Island to shoot ship exteriors, including the working
Black Pearl and
Flying Dutchman. Filming there was a tumultuous period, starting with the fact that the tank had not actually been finished. The hurricane season caused many pauses in shooting, and
Hurricane Wilma damaged many of the accessways and pumps, though no one was hurt nor were any of the ships destroyed. with the last shot made was the
raven pecking on Jack Sparrow's
coffin. This was after two weeks of filming night scenes, from sunset to sunrise. The look of the
Flying Dutchman was partially inspired by old Dutch "
fluyts"—17th-century vessels which resembled
galleons—and more specifically, the
Vasa, a massive Swedish
warship which sank in Stockholm's harbor upon its maiden voyage in 1628 (the ship was salvaged in 1961 and housed in a special museum in the Swedish capital). With its high, heavily ornamented stern, the ship provided a rich foundation for Rick Heinrichs' wilder and more fantastical designs. One of the stuntmen,
Johnny Depp's stunt double Tony Angelotti, was injured on set while filming a "human yo-yo" stunt in July 2005. He was rushed to hospital, suffering internal bleeding after "nicking" a branch off his femoral artery. He lost six units of blood, had an ACL reconstruction and spent a year in recovery, before having to have the surgery all over again when a plate in his pelvis broke. He also suffered from PTSD. Despite this, he did continue filming for the following sequel, ''At World's End'', albeit doing "lighter stunts" like sword choreography or working as a stunt coordinator. However, in 2007, Tony Angelotti did sue Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer for the injury.
Visual effects The
Flying Dutchmans crew members were originally conceived by writers
Ted Elliott and
Terry Rossio as ghosts, but
Gore Verbinski disliked this and designed them as physical creatures. Their hierarchy is reflected by how mutated they were: newcomers had low level infections which resemble
rosacea, while veterans had full-blown undersea creature attributes. Verbinski wanted to keep them realistic, rejecting a character with a turtle shell, and the animators watched various
David Attenborough documentaries to study the movement of
sea anemones and mussels. All of the crew are
computer-generated, with the exception of
Stellan Skarsgård, who played
"Bootstrap" Bill Turner. Initially his prosthetics would be augmented with CGI but that was abandoned. Skarsgård spent four hours in the make-up chair and was dubbed "
Bouillabaisse" on set.
Davy Jones had originally been designed with chin growths, before the designers made the move to full-blown
tentacles; the skin of the character incorporates the texture of a coffee-stained Styrofoam cup among other elements. To portray Jones on set,
Bill Nighy wore a
motion capture tracksuit that meant the animators at
Industrial Light & Magic did not have to reshoot the scene in the studio without him or on the motion capture stage. Nighy wore make-up around his eyes and mouth to splice into the computer-generated shots, but the images of his eyes and mouth were not used. Nighy only wore a prosthetic once, with blue-colored tentacles for when
Will Turner (
Orlando Bloom) steals the key to the Dead Man's Chest from under his "beard" as he sleeps. To create the CGI version of the character, the model was closely based on a full-body scan of Nighy, with Jones reflecting his high cheekbones. Animators studied every frame of Nighy's performance: the actor himself had blessed them by making his performance more quirky than expected, providing endless fun for them. His performance also meant new controls had to be stored. Finally, Jones' tentacles are mostly a simulation, though at times they were hand-animated when they act as limbs for the character. The
Kraken was difficult to animate as it had no real-life reference, until animation director Hal Hickel instructed the crew to watch
King Kong vs. Godzilla which featured a live octopus crawling over miniatures. On the set, two pipes filled with of cement were used to crash and split the
Edinburgh Trader: Completing the illusion are miniature masts and falling stuntmen shot on a
bluescreen stage. The scene where the Kraken spits at
Jack Sparrow does not use computer-generated spit: it was real slime thrown at Depp. ==Music==