This paper examines how the film, Pirates of the Caribbean, was an immensely successful film on a financial basis, as well as on an entertainment, and even an artistic, basis. It looks at how, while there are a number of elements that added up to success for the movie, including the performance of Johnny Depp and the allure of heart-throb Orlando Bloom, the fundamental reason that the movie was successful is that it managed to take a tried-and-true movie formula and do something genuinely new with it. It shows how the film walked the thin line between being just another pirate movie and an extended version of the Disneyland ride without the fun of those two quick drops at the beginning and something so esoteric that it would not have the ‘legs’ to draw in a large audience.