Walt Disney Pictures has, at last, officially titled the fourth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean.
The fourth movie in the hugely successful multi-billion dollar franchise will be known as Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Although very little is known about the plot direction, it was vaguely implied at the end of the third movie “PotC: At World’s End”, that Captain Jack Sparrow and Captain Barbossa would set off on their own adventures with the Fountain of Youth being the focus of their attention.
The movies are part of a franchise incorporating a Theme park ride, Video Games, Spinoff novels and other publications. As of August 2006 the movies alone have been estimated to have grossed over 2.7 billion dollars. The original theme park attraction has the honor of being the last one ever designed with input from Walt Disney himself. While it was first envisioned in the 1950’s as wax museum that visitors would walk through, the experience and technology gained from the 1964-1965 World Fair soon changed that. Disney Imagineers made the attraction into a boat ride, which took visitors through environments featuring Audio-Animatronic Pirates in the process of sacking a Caribbean port. The theme song “Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me)” brings about a light hearted tone to the violent characters depicted in the scenes.
Since the attraction opened in 1967 at Disneyland, it has been reproduced in different forms, first at Magic Kingdom at the Walt Disney Resort in 1973, then in Japan at Tokyo Disneyland in 1983, and finally in France at Disneyland Paris in 1992.