I think audiences ultimately want something new. I think the business model for a franchise is such that it's very low risk because you have data and studios love data.

There's so much work in making movies, it's so easy to tear one down. When I watch a movie, even one that I don't particularly enjoy, I'm constantly impressed at the work that's in it. I respect the craftsmen and women. I tolerate a lot of movies that maybe other people don't, just because I know what goes into them.

I think that's really the kind of exponential factor in being in a punk-rock band or making music videos and movies -pirates and rock 'n' roll go hand in hand. There is a `question authority,' `don't be afraid to break the rules' quality that whether you're a 4-year-old bouncing on your bed as your parents are trying to stop it or an adult longing for that feeling, there's something inside all of us that piracy speaks to. I'm going to do what I want to do and I don't care what you think.

I just watched so many Westerns as a kid that you end up using archetypes and sort of tropes of that genre, because there's a language there and you can twist it and turn it on its head or play to it or go sideways at any time.

I like horror movies, and in fact I like them even more now after making one. I just think they're much more liberating because you don't really have to apply a very strict logic.

Animated films are so precisely engineered - right down to forming lines of dialogue with words pulled from several different takes - how do you translate that spontaneity from the live-action to the digital realm?

My agent called and said, 'How do you feel about a pirate movie? I mean, how often are you going to get that call? It's sort of the singularly most failed genre of our time, but I thought it had to be attempted one more time. I think there's something rebellious about pirates, something revolutionary about them. They came out of a time when things were oppressive; you could get hung for stealing a loaf of bread. For me, the Pirates films are about when it's right to break the rules to achieve what you want.