Development
In 2001, Jay Wolpert wrote a script based on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, which was based on a story created by the Walt Disney Studios executives Brigham Taylor, Michael Haynes and Josh Harmon. This story featured Will Turner as a prison guard who releases Jack Sparrow to rescue Elizabeth Swann, who is being held for ransom by Captain Blackheart. By March 2002, Disney brought Stuart Beattie in to rewrite the script because of his knowledge of piracy. Beattie stated that he talked about making a pirate film based on the ride while tossing a Frisbee with a friend and wrote a first draft titled "Quest for the Caribbean" while on exchange to Oregon State University in 1991.
Screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio notably thought about a pirate film based on the ride during the early 1990s, having pitched the idea after completing work on the 1992 film Aladdin as a premise to studio executives who were not interested at the time. Undeterred, the writing team refused to give up the dream, waiting for a studio to pick up their take on a pirate tale. Having worked with Disney on Aladdin and the 2002 film Treasure Planet, among other successful films, Elliott and Rossio were also brought in for Pirates of the Caribbean to give it a "more supernatural spin". Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio were the final writers to receive screenplay credit, while all four writers received story credits.
When Dick Cook managed to convince producer Jerry Bruckheimer to join the project, he rejected Jay Wolpert's script because it was "a straight pirate movie". Later in March 2002, Bruckheimer brought Elliott and Rossio, who suggested making a supernatural curse—as described in the opening narration of the ride—the film's plot.
Disney was unsure whether to release the film in theaters or direct-to-video. The studio was interested in Matthew McConaughey as Sparrow because of his resemblance to Burt Lancaster, who had inspired that script's interpretation of the character. If they chose to release it direct-to-video, Christopher Walken or Cary Elwes would have been their first choice.
In May 2002, Gore Verbinski signed on to direct Pirates of the Caribbean. He was attracted to the idea of using modern technology to resurrect a genre that had disappeared after the Golden Age of Hollywood. He recalled his childhood memories of the ride, feeling the film was an opportunity to pay tribute to the "scary and funny" tone of it.
Although Cook had been a strong proponent of adapting Disney's rides into films, the box-office failure of The Country Bears (2002) made Michael Eisner attempt to shut down production of Pirates of the Caribbean. However, Verbinski told his concept artists to keep working on the picture, and when Eisner came to visit, Eisner was astonished by what had been created.
As recalled in the book DisneyWar, Eisner asked "Why does it have to cost so much?". Bruckheimer replied, "Your competition is spending $150 million," referring to franchises like The Lord of the Rings and The Matrix. Eisner concurred, but with the stigma attached to theme-park adaptations, Eisner requested Verbinski and Bruckheimer remove some of the more overt references to the ride in the Pirates of the Caribbean script, such as a scene where Sparrow and Turner enter a cave via a waterfall. Another change was the addition of The Curse of the Black Pearl as a subtitle in the event that the film proved successful enough to warrant sequels. Verbinski protested the change, as it is the Aztec gold that is cursed, not the Black Pearl ship. Eisner refused to back down and The Curse of the Black Pearl remained as the subtitle, although on most posters and trailers the words were so small as to be barely visible following a request from Verbinski.
Ted Elliott was allegedly writing a George Lucas-produced animated film adaptation of The Curse of Monkey Island, which was cancelled before its official announcement, three years prior to the release of Pirates of the Caribbean. This film was allegedly in production at Industrial Light and Magic before being cancelled. Ron Gilbert, the creator of the Monkey Island series, has jokingly expressed a bitterness towards Pirates of the Caribbean films, specifically the second film, for its similarities to his game.
Gilbert has stated that Tim Powers' 1987 novel On Stranger Tides, which was adapted into the fourth Pirates film, was the principal source of inspiration for his video games. Pirates screenwriter Terry Rossio mentioned how Disney was hit with at least six plagiarism lawsuits for the first Pirates of the Caribbean film for supposedly stealing elements of the Monkey Island video game and the On Stranger Tides novel, despite there being a ride at Disneyland and also a first draft screenplay by other writers.
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