Hmmm. Disney may have finally come up with a gambit that makes me interested in a Pirates of the Caribbean 4. According to Variety, Chicago director Rob Marshall is close to signing on as the director for the fourth film, replacing Gore Verbinski, who has moved on to do other things.

I know what you're thinking. "He's going to have Johnny Depp singing and dancing!" "Chicago sucked!" But Marshall's sense of staginess and visual play might work really well in the Pirates franchise, which is really nothing but an excuse to take outlandish characters and put them in crazy situations-- kind of like a musical, really. Plus Marshall will have his best plaything ever with Johnny Depp, whose Captain Jack Sparrow could have killed a number like "Roxie."

Again, not that I think Marshall will turn it into the musical. And it's true, we haven't seen much evidence that he has a sense of action sequences or the giddy fun that marked the franchise at its best. But the very fact that Disney is willing to depart from the formula a bit for the fourth movie, and try something even remotely daring, makes this project 10 times more interesting. Not that it needs to exist, but at least it's making a decent argument for itself.