may 10, 2017 - VANITY FAIR Johnny Depp's Financial Woes Might Sink the Next Pirates of the Caribbean

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Johnny Depp’s favorite franchise is in trouble. Even as the actor has been embroiled in personal scandal and legal drama in recent years, Depp has continued to work steadily as one of the highest-paid actor’s in poHollywood (he came in fifth on Forbes’s annual ranking last year, pulling in $48 million). But it’s now possible that the actor’s personal problems have finally gotten so big that they could derail his upcoming movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales—the fifth installment of the franchise that changed the course of Depp’s career.

A striking new report from The Hollywood Reporter __indicates that the actor’s shocking spending habits and current lawsuit against his business managers might adversely affect the film’s bottom line. “Studio execs worry that Depp's personal peccadilloes could impact the marketing of their $230 million-budget tentpole and future of a $3.7 billion box-office franchise,” T.H.R. notes. After all, it’s been six years since Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides opened to $350 million worldwide, going on to earn more than $1 billion—and in the intervening years, Depp has starred in a string of flashy failures, including Dark Shadows, The Lone Ranger, Mortdecai, and most recently Alice Through the Looking Glass, which underperformed so dramatically that its paltry take caused Disney stock to dip temporarily.

Depp has also endured a series of personal woes. His troubles ballooned in 2016, when he and Amber Heard filed for divorce—an event that mushroomed into a much larger controversy when Heard alleged that Depp had abused her. Depp denied the charges, accusing Heard of “attempting to secure a premature financial resolution by alleging abuse.” After several weeks of nasty back-and-forth, the pair eventually reached a $7 million out-of-court divorce settlement, and finalized their divorce in January.

This year was kicked off by new controversy, with Depp firing his longtime business managers and later filing a $28 million lawsuit against them, claiming they mishandled his finances. The Management Group fired back with a lawsuit of its own, and now purported details of Depp’s extravagant, $2 million a month lifestyle—which he apparently cannot afford to keep up—are seeping out to the public. The suit paints a picture of a free-wheeling multimillionaire who owns about 14 homes worth around $50 million to $60 million, and loves buying up pricey artifacts, like valuable Klimt and Warhol paintings.

Depp is synonymous with the Pirates brand, having played the rum-guzzling Captain Jack Sparrow since the series kicked off in 2003. But according to T.H.R., the actor has grown unpredictable and erratic, and was difficult to keep track of during the making of the latest Pirates film in Australia in 2015. (The Australian government would agree.)

“Sources close to the production report tales of excessive drinking, physical fights with Heard, and constant lateness on set, which often left hundreds of extras waiting for hours at a time,” T.H.R. notes. The on-set drama pushed producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney production chief Sean Bailey to “huddle and debate how to handle their star’s tardiness.”

“You’ve got to understand the kind of pressure Johnny was under in Australia,” Bruckheimer tells T.H.R. “At times helicopters would follow him home. There would be so many media outside his gates that trucks were feeding them. There was so much stuff made up about him: that Johnny had a fight on-set and had gone back to the States, which we both read about while we were in his trailer.”

But other sources tell the magazine that Depp was so difficult to get a hold of that the studio had to assign a staffer to stay outside the actor’s compound and alert other staffers when he would rise each day. “They even had a special code term, like ‘The eagle has landed.’ Johnny had no idea this was going on,” one source told the magazine.

Depp has allegedly become difficult even for his reps to deal with, T.H.R. reports, saying that it’s become harder to find time where he’s “free and clear of mind and in the right mood. He got angry a lot. He'd scream at someone that worked at the house or his security.”

If the next Pirates film doesn’t perform as expected, it would be yet another big-budget flop added to Depp’s recent daisy chain of underwhelming films. Depp has had a Teflon quality throughout all of this, continuing to become part of successful projects (like Warner Bros.’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) even after Heard’s accusations of domestic abuse became public. Disney is counting on his public appeal to the extent that it has enlisted him for in-person publicity stunts ahead of the new Pirates release. But the stakes for the new film are extraordinarily high, especially given how much of the big budget Depp commands for himself. “The actor routinely earned $20 million upfront against 20 percent of the backend per picture and had a perk package worth approximately $3 million,” T.H.R. notes. If the fifth installment of Pirates is a flop, coupled with Depp’s massive paycheck and personal controversy, it might tip Disney over the edge—and make Depp’s future income streams a little less of a sure thing.


SOURCE:
US VA Court Documents:
- Amber Heard Exhibit 71

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