More than 500k people sign petition to have Johnny Depp return to Pirates of the Caribbean

A petition to have Johnny Depp reinstated to The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has attracted more than 700,000 signatures amid the actor's ongoing defamation trial with his ex-wife Amber Heard.

The Change.org petition, which was actually launched 12 months ago, when plans for a sixth film were cancelled following the allegations that Heard had made about Depp.

The petition which is addressed to Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer doesn't mention Heard or the defamation trial in its description but a flurry of recent comments from signators have begun to bring up the trial.

A separate petition, also on Change, called "Justice for Johnny Depp" has attracted more than 500,000 signatures. This petition was launched two years ago and also hasn't been updated to mention the defamation trial but does claim that Heard "ruined Johnny Depp’s life as well as career."

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Like the first petition mentioned in this article, there appears to have been a significant uptake in interest in the petitions since the new trial started.

Earlier this month, Depp's talent manager, Jack Whigham, claimed that the actor missed out on $22.5 million when the sixth film was canned. Depp has played Captain Jack Sparrow in all five of The Pirates of the Caribbean films to date.

He was also reportedly asked to resign from his role as Grindelwald in the Harry Potter spin-off series Fantastic Beasts in 2020 after losing a libel case. He was replaced in the third film in this series, which was released earlier this year by Mads Mikkelsen.

However, Christian Carino, the couple's talent agent claimed that he wasn't aware of any roles that Depp had missed out on because of the allegations made against the actor in a 2018 op-ed that Heard wrote for The Washington Post but believes that he did lose the Captain Jack Sparrow part because of the claims.

In comparison, Heard's role as Mera in Aquaman 2 has reportedly been cut down to just 10 minutes.

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