From the mumble rumble out of the trades this morning comes news that the 4th installment of the POTC movie franchise will center around a book by the name of "Stranger Tides" by Tim Powers. Turns out this book was optioned by Disney years ago and now will be the foundation for "Pirates of The Caribbean 4". The book is off course focused on the legendary fountain of youth.
"Stranger Tides" is a novel that centers around a character by the name of "Jack Shandy" who is on a entirely different side quest when he falls prey to sorcery practicing Pirates and ends up in the company of the most famous Pirate of them all: Blackbeard, who is on a quest to find the elusive Fountain of Youth.
Powers let the LA Times in on how he thinks Disney will translate his book to the next installment in the Pirates franchis up on big screen:
"I've watched all the movies several times and I think the clear thing they would use is the trip to the Fountain of Youth," he said.
How does the main character "Jack Shandy" compare to Captain Jack Sparrow?
"My main character doesn't overlap with Jack Sparrow at all [in personality or circumstance]; they're totally different characters. I suppose they might overlap the Geoffrey Rush character Barbossa and Blackbeard. The only thing I feel certain they will hold on to is the Fountain of Youth since they telegraphed that at the end of the last movie."
Screenwriter Terry Rosio also chimed in to say:
"We wanted to do a story about Blackbeard and the Fountain of Youth, and Tim Powers wrote a book about Blackbeard and the Fountain of Youth... it just turns out that to do that story you would need that book. It's a brilliant and Tim Powers is an amazing writer - and it's a great title. It allows us to draw material from that universe and his expertise. I don't know if its proper to say [the film is] based on [the book] but there are enough common elements to think that the book had to be optioned to us to reasonably proceed along that story line."
So Comicbookmovie fans is "The Fountain of Youth" intriguing enough for you to plant yourselves in the theater for a few hours? Or not so much? Yo ho ho and a bottle of Rum!