There was a time when Gore Verbinskiwas the biggest director in Hollywood, due to a number of massive hits, most notably the Pirates of the Caribbeantrilogy that ran from 2003 to 2007 and grossed over $2.6 billion worldwide. Few thought that a movie based on a Disney theme park attraction could do that well, but it followed Verbinski’s The Ring, one of the best J-horror remakes made by Hollywood, leading up to Verbinski winning an Oscar for his original animated feature, Rango. Things started to go downhill after that, beginning with the massive flop, The Lone Ranger, a movie trashed by critics that hasn’t been helped by the fact it stars Armie Hammer and Verbinski regular Johnny Depp. Verbinski’s return to horror with A Cure For Wellnessin 2016 (starring future breakout star Mia Goth) was an even bigger bomb, although that has found a cult audience, despite its own bad reviews.
There’s been recent word that Verbinski has filmed an enigmatic time travel movie called Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, with an impressive cast, including Sam Rockwell. Even so, there haven’t been many updates on it, and Verbinski himself hasn’t done any press in recent years to discuss that movie or what else he’s been up to in the nine years since Cure. Considering the current state of the movie business, it seems that a filmmaker like Verbinski might be exactly what Hollywood needs to get more consistent business into theaters.
Gore Verbinski Proved His Chops Before Two Misses Led to “Director’s Jail”
Verbinski’s 2002 remake of the Japanese horror film, The Ring, came out at a time when there were so many horror remakes coming out of the woodwork. That was a genuinely scary film, and Verbinski integrated that proclivity for horror into all three of his Pirates of the Caribbean movies, from the skeletal pirates walking across the ocean floor to Bill Nighy‘s Davy Jones in the second movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Verbinski’s Pirates trilogy also showed he could direct exciting big-screen action, something that he tried to bring to his 2013 adaptation of the popular television hero, The Lone Ranger, but that had much bigger problems. That movie was destroyed by critics and bombed very badly, so Verbinski transitioned to original storytelling with the horror A Cure For Wellness, which ended up bombing even worse without the benefits of being I.P. Disney was so embarrassed by The Lone Ranger, you can’t find it anywhere on the Disney+ streamer, but that’s probably for other reasons than Verbinski.A Cure for Wellness (inherited by Disney after buying Fox) is easier to find on streaming.
After A Cure for Wellness, Verbinski seemed to vanish despite being attached to so many projects, including a Gambit movie, starring Channing Tatum, and a long-in-development movie based on the hit video game Bioshock, but nothing came to fruition there either. It’s hard to believe that “director’s jail” is a real thing, but when someone as successful as Verbinski literally vanishes for nearly a decade, one has to wonder whether the negative reviews for two movies that bombed are enough to make Verbinski untouchable within the Hollywood studio system that’s necessary to finance movies on the scale Verbinski was making. It’s not that uncommon for filmmakers, even of Verbinski’s caliber, to take time off or not have a new movie for years, but nine years is more than long enough for a filmmaker to make a much-needed comeback.
Verbinski’s Directing Skills Could Bring Massive Cred to Any Franchise
All you have to do is rewatch the three Pirates movies directed by Verbinski to see a visionary filmmaker who can effortlessly mix disparate film genres. He clearly has a penchant for horror, as seen by those outlandish pirate creatures on display, and he also has directed many brilliant action sequences, unlike anything we’ve seen from other action directors, which seems to make him perfect to take on another big studio movie or even a franchise. It’s hard to believe that Rango and Cure were Verbinski’s only original films, and maybe that was the direction he hoped to go after Pirates, but there are many franchises that could use a filmmaker who regularly thinks outside the box.
If Verbinski has indeed been relegated to “director’s jail,” there has to be a way to get out of it. In recent years, we’ve seen the likes of Hong Kong legend John Woo, who was super-hot in ’90s Hollywood, and Underworld director Len Wiseman return to theaters to varying degrees of success. Verbinski’s Pirates of the Caribbean movies played such a massive part in the success of Walt Disney Pictures in the early 2000s, before it had the Star Wars and MCU franchises to bolster its bank account.
While it’s still a shame that Verbinski’s Gambit and Bioshock never came to be, there are plenty of other horror-related comic books that would fit into Verbinski’s wheelhouse. For instance, if James Mangold drops out of a Swamp Thing movie to do one of his other projects (like Star Wars), Verbinski could do a great job with that, based on his past work. And what about that Blade movie that Marvel has been trying to make for many years? That doesn’t have a director right now either. Attaching a director of Verbinski’s caliber might finally get that movie off the ground. In other words, there’s no valid reason for Verbinski to remain in “director’s jail” if he still has the skills that led to his earlier beloved films.
