Why Pirates of the Caribbean 5 Might Not Be A Good Idea

Pirates of the Caribbean 4 was bad. It earned, on average, 33% from the critics – an “F”. How much worse could the fifth installment be? By our calculations, it’ll earn a 31% rating – 61% worse than the original.

We found this in our analysis of all major film series released since 1964. We broke down reviews from the critics and revenue at the box office to pin down the diminishing returns of sequels:

How Pirates’ decline compares to the average series;

In 2003 we all loved watching Elizabeth and Will sail off on the high seas. But with the fifth movie coming out in 2015, we don’t know how much longer we can take Captain Jack’s drunken puns and raccoon makeup.

It wasn’t always this bad. After the twist in the final minutes of the first film, we were all itching to see the second. And it shows: Pirates 2 earned $100 thousand dollars more than its predecessor. But were the third and fourth sequels truly necessary or are the producers just trying to milk the franchise cash cow?

The general trend points to the latter, as you can see in the table above. All in all, when the fifth movie rolls around, on average, it is 48% worse than the original.

Pirates’ fall is particularly spectacular, having already flopped harder than most series. By the time of the fourth movie, critics were already extremely displeased: On Stranger Tides earned a 33%. That’s a 58% drop from the first film, which earned a 79% from the critics.

Article was written by Mike Anderson a Writer for NerdWallet