Blockbuster producer Jerry Bruckheimer always has marquee projects in the works.  One of his biggest, the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, was set to release its fifth entry—reportedly titled Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales—on July 10, 2015.  But the film was delayed so that directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg (Kon-Tiki) would have more time to work on the script with screenwriter Jeff Nathanson (Rush Hour 3).  In a recent interview, Bruckheimer provided an update on the film saying he ‘”hopes to ‘get that going” by this fall or end of the year’ if everything lines up properly.”  I can’t imagine Disney wanting to let the franchise rest for long, especially since its latest entry, On Stranger Tides, raked in over a billion dollars worldwide.  Bruckheimer also said Johnny Depp is expected to come back (I don’t see how you make these movies without him) and “they’d be happy to have Keith Richards return.”

Hit the jump for what Bruckheimer had to say about Beverly Hills Cop 4.

Jerry Bruckheimer’s move from Disney to Paramount is now official.  The prolific producer and Disney decided to part ways after the box office bust of this summer’s The Lone Ranger, on which Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski argued successfully for a budget north of $200 million.  Paramount officially announced today that Bruckheimer has finalized a three-year first-look deal with the studio set to begin next April, returning him to the home where he got his start as the producer of films like Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop, and Days of Thunder.

Per Deadline, Bruckheimer’s first film back at Paramount will be the long-developing Beverly Hills Cop 4, which Brett Ratner will direct after he finishes up Hercules.  Eddie Murphy is reprising his role and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol scribes Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec are penning the screenplay.  Additionally, the Top Gun sequel is another priority for the studio, with Tom Cruise also attached to return.

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney will go their separate ways when their contract ends in 2014.  Bruckheimer tells THR that “It’s time for us to tackle all kinds of movies, not just Disney movies,” which is an odd statement from someone who is currently working on Beverly Hills Cop 4 and Bad Boys 3.  If Bruckheimer has a deep desire to make movies that don’t fall into a blockbuster mold, we haven’t heard about it.  Bruckheimer will remain on board to produce Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean and National Treasure franchises, and says he wanted to continue his relationship with Disney on other movies, but “he’s confident he will get a deal,” at another studio.

Hit the jump for more including how The Lone Ranger factored into the decision.

Though producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s recent hits are mostly massive, wide-appeal tentpole fare like the Pirates of the Caribbean series and National Treasure, he made a name for himself in the 1980s and 1990s for producing more R-rated content like Bad Boys and, to great success, Beverly Hills Cop.  Though CBS passed on a pilot adaptation of Beverly Hills Cop earlier this year, Paramount is now trying to get a fourth feature film off the ground and it appears that Bruckehimer—who produced the first and second BHC films—is keen on coming back to produce the fourth film.  Moreover, the report adds that Bruckheimer is helping develop a script for the long-awaited Bad Boys 3 (!!!).  Hit the jump for more.

The box office failure of Disney’s The Lone Ranger looks like it will have ramifications for the studio’s upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean 5.  While Kon-Tiki helmers Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg have already been tapped to direct the next Pirates film and production is poised to begin later this year, Disney is apparently making a few changes behind the scenes.  As a result of the studio being forced to take a $160-$190 million writedown for The Lone Ranger, producer Jerry Bruckheimer may lose final cut on Pirates 5.  Moreover, Disney is apparently looking to trim the budget on the next Jack Sparrow adventure.  Hit the jump for more.

With a production budget in the neighborhood of $150 million and a worldwide pull of just under $50 million entering its second weekend, it’s probably fair to say that White House Down will ultimately be seen by the powers that be as a bust. Blame its proximity to the similarly themed Olympus Has Fallen (which, on the whole, received similar critical reaction but comparatively more box office success) if you will, but having watched and enjoyed the heck out of the film last night I believe at least some of the blame lies at the feet of Sony’s marketing. Whereas Fallen was packaged, and ultimately delivered, as a dead serious action/thriller, I don’t think White House Down marketing did enough to prep its potential audience members for the over-the-top, often times ridiculous, self-aware genre piece they would encounter. The best examples I can give to support this theory are the multiple scenes that left me laughing out loud while the majority of my fellow moviegoers sat quietly, unsure whether the movie was actually asking them to laugh with it or was just that silly and contrived. It’s possible that I’m going Roland Emmerich and co. too much credit, but I went with the former every single time and ended up having a great time with the film as a result.

All White House drama aside, this week’s Top 5 includes a slew of interviews from The Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp and more, a list of 15 movies from the first half of 2013 that you may have missed but definitely deserve a look, Christian Bale insisting that he is not involved with the Justice League movie in any way, The Way, Way Back interviews with Steve Carell and more, and a look at our most anticipated movies from July to September.

With director Gore Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger opening this Wednesday, Disney held a big press junket Santa Fe, New Mexico.  While I’ve done a lot of interviews, it was incredibly cool to be talking to the cast and filmmakers with the beautiful New Mexico desert behind us.  If you’ve missed the trailers, the story focuses on John Reid (Armie Hammer) surviving an attack, being saved by Native American warrior Tonto (Johnny Depp), and the two teaming up to fight injustice.  As you can see in this featurette, the production went to enormous lengths to film the majority of The Lone Ranger practically, and they shot at some amazing locations all around the country.  The film also stars Tom Wilkinson, Ruth Wilson, William Fichtner, Barry Pepper, James Badge Dale, and Helena Bonham Carter.

During my interview with producer Jerry Bruckheimer, he talked about what he likes to collect, which scene he was nervous to shoot, which location impressed him the most, deleted scenes, and more.  In addition, he also gave me an update on Pirates of the Caribbean 5.  He said they plan on filming “end of this year, beginning of next year.”  Hit the jump to watch.

Disney has released a new behind-the-scenes featurette for director Gore Verbinski’s upcoming film The Lone Ranger.  The story focuses on John Reid (Armie Hammer) surviving an attack, being saved by Native American warrior Tonto (Johnny Depp), and the two teaming up to fight injustice.  This new featurette chronicles the heavy location-based production, as we see the enormous lengths to which Verbinski went in order to make the majority of The Lone Ranger practically.  In fact, this featurette shows Depp falling completely off of his horse mid-stride during a stunt, and we get a look at the actor’s bruising that occurred as a result.

Hit the jump to watch the featurette.  The film also stars Tom Wilkinson, Ruth Wilson, William Fichtner, Barry Pepper, James Badge Dale, and Helena Bonham Carter.  The Lone Ranger opens July 3rd.

Disney has released a new featurette for the upcoming feature The Lone Ranger, and it’s an excellent example of why I’m looking forward to the film.  In this featurette, we see Armie Hammer performing a pretty hairy-looking stunt that involves standing atop a towering platform in the middle of the Utah desert, with only a harness keeping him from plummeting to the bottom of a canyon.  Most directors would shoot this sequence on a soundstage with plenty of green screen, but The Lone Ranger’s Gore Verbinski has shown a fantastic propensity for crazy practical stuntwork in his previous three Pirates of the Caribbean films, and I’m eager to see that same production value on the screen in The Lone Ranger.

Hit the jump to watch the featurette.  The film also stars Johnny Depp, Tom Wilkinson, William Fichtner, Barry Pepper, James Badge Dale, Ruth Wilson, and Helena Bonham Carter.  The Lone Ranger opens July 3rd.

Disney has finally settled on a director for the upcoming fifth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and it’s a somewhat surprising choice.  We learned earlier this month that Disney had narrowed the director list down to Fredrik Bond (The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman), Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg (Kon-Tiki), and Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman), and now Deadline reports that the directing duo of Rønning and Sandberg has landed the job.  Rønning and Sandberg are best known for helming last year’s Norwegian action/adventure film Kon-Tiki, which was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.  Hit the jump for more.

Unlike its broadcasting cohorts, CBS doesn’t typically use its upfronts as a time to frantically throw the everything and the kitchen sink out there in the hopes one sticks.  CBS knows its audience, and it’s steadily successful because of it.  What is so interesting with this year’s upfronts then is that they actually did shake things up a little: they didn’t pick up another NCIS spinoff, and they overlooked Beverly Hills Cops.

Instead, CBS is adding two single-camera comedies (The Crazy Ones with Robin Williams, and We Are Men with Kal Penn) and a limited series run of Hostages, a Jerry Bruckheimer production.  Though most of the CBS schedule will look familiar (crime shows, canned laughter comedy), these new additions add a level of interest to CBS’s schedule not usually seen.  Hit the jump for the schedule details.

Shortly before producer Jerry Bruckheimer hit the CinemaCon stage in Las Vegas to talk about The Lone Ranger (watch the new trailer here), I landed a short video interview with him on the red carpet backstage.  Since I knew my time would be very limited, I decided to ask the most important question first: What will it take to get Bad Boys 3 made!

In addition to asking about a Bad Boys sequel, he also discussed his reaction to seeing the finished cut of The Lone Ranger, how they decided which footage to show at CinemaCon, and the status of Pirates of the Caribbean 5 and National Treasure 3.  He says they’re working on scripts for both, with a team of writers working on National Treasure 3 and Ted Elliot/Terry Rossio and Jeff Nathanson writing Pirates 5.  Hit the jump to watch.

A new image from director Gore Verbinski’s upcoming The Lone Ranger has been released.  The film stars Armie Hammer as the titular hero and Johnny Depp as his trusty sidekick Tonto, and judging by the two trailers we’ve seen thus far, Verbinski has turned in a rather epic take on the Western genre.  Producer Jerry Bruckheimer shared this new image on his Twitter, and it’s a nice silhouette of what appears to be our titular character on horseback as he rides away from a rising fire.

Hit the jump to take a look at the image.  The film also stars Tom Wilkinson, William Fichtner, Barry Pepper, James Badge Dale, Ruth Wilson, and Helena Bonham Carter.  The Lone Ranger opens July 3, 2013.

It appears that the Top Gun sequel may be dead.  Director Tony Scott, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and star Tom Cruise were all enthusiastic about returning for a fighter pilot follow-up, and The Town scribe Peter Craig had even been drafted to craft a screenplay, but sadly Scott’s death earlier this year looks to have put the project in limbo.  The New York Times (via The Playlist) reports that Top Gun 2 “has fallen apart,” dashing hopes of seeing a Maverick/Iceman reunion onscreen.

However, Paramount is still moving forward with plans to release a 3D version of the original Top Gun. NYT adds that the studio is considering a February release for the post-converted pic, possibly with a one-week exclusive showing on domestic IMAX screens.   Though I know many were looking forward to seeing what would transpire in Top Gun 2, I can’t help thinking that the follow-up is better left untouched now that Scott is no longer with us.

In a recent interview with Geoffrey Rush, the Pirates of the Caribbean star confessed he had no idea when the fifth installment would be going forward.  But now we know where it’s going, at least.  Pirates of the Caribbean 5 appears to be headed to Puerto Rico to start shooting this November. That’s good news, since the status of the film is somewhat in flux, with Rob Marshall (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) possibly returning to direct and the script in the process of being finalized. As we all know, the next installment (and the franchise itself) sets its course by its star, Johnny Depp.  Should we expect to see him in Puerto Rico this fall?  Hit the jump for more.