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Reagen Sulewski: We're probably getting a 2012 sequel at some point, and why? Because international audiences ate that crap up to the tune of $600 million. Resident Evil Afterlife made as much internationally as the two previous films did in total put together. If there are better examples of how dramatically international box office can change a franchise's prospects, I haven't seen them.

Captain Jack, it's not you, it's us.

Kim Hollis: If you're Disney, how hard is it to resist doing yet another Pirates movie? If you do in fact want to do another, do you rush to get one in theaters or do you pause and take your time to create a better story?

Edwin Davies: I think it would be a surprisingly tough call, since if they do it too quickly, and if word-of-mouth for On Stranger Tides is as weak as the critical response, then any future film, even if it is a considerable improvement that recaptures the fun and spirit of the original, will struggle to overcome the bad smell of its predecessor, something which I would argue has already impacted the series on two occasions. And how long is long enough to wait to work on the story? There's been a gap of four years between On Stranger Tides and At World's End, and absence didn't seem to make people that much fonder of the series. If they did wait, the only action that would make all that much sense would be to start from scratch and reboot the series, at which point the question would be whether or not the series could even exist without Johnny Depp.

They'd probably be best off accepting that a fifth installment will yield diminishing returns and either leave it for a few years, or leap right in but cut costs significantly, because $250 million (plus marketing costs) would be too much to risk if they weren't guaranteed the sort of returns the first three films saw.

Samuel Hoelker: What Disney should have done was wait another five years or so before making On Stranger Tides. I'm reminded of the Men in Black franchise: the second one was so atrocious that it just about took away any good will the first one had (and I think the first one is nearly perfect). If Men in Black III came out in 2005, chances are I wouldn't have seen it. Yet since it's being released in 2012, I will see it and have a bit of faith in it: they've had ten years to fix everything wrong. They'll need at least that much time to fix everything I didn't like about the Pirates sequels (and even the original, of which I'm not a big fan). I'd give the franchise another chance in 2017 or so, but it's way too soon to recapture lost audiences.

If only it were 10-15 years ago, Disney could make a lot of money turning Pirates into an animated kids' show.

Max Braden: My first thought is how you could pull off a fifth one. Blackbeard was the last of the big name pirates when the golden age of piracy was ending, so to get to Captain Kidd or others and maintain an element of swashbuckling you'd have to send the Black Pearl around the sun to go back in time. And I don't see why Knightley and Bloom would return for a fifth if they couldn't be convinced for this fourth movie. But then, if Indiana Jones 4 could be made and rake in money you'd imagine anything is possible. You could just embrace the obstacles, go with the reboot trend, and cast a completely new actor to play First Mate Jack Sparrow when he was 20 years younger. I have to imagine with the international success, another installment must be flashing dollar signs in Disney's eyes right now. If a mediocre story pulled in this much money this time there's no reason to expect quality will be foremost on their minds for another sequel.

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