I haven't even wanted to participate on this thread for months now, because I am weary of the fingerpointing at Tim and WB over a film that IMHO is FAR from being in "developmental hell", or assumptions that it's being shown a lack of interest just because the filming may be delayed by a year. The current version of the script only just got handed in recently, from what I gathered from John August's feedback. Johnny himself said in June that the film was "very, very close" as opposed to saying "it's ready" Many other aspects of getting the film started will have to be put in motion. If they originally wanted to film this fall, and if they did send out feelers to that trade publication you found, jimbo, and the film didn't get going this fall after all, it simply shows that they weren't totally ready yet, as Nancy also said. A LOT of films are being set back because of the current economy, and I'm sure that I brought this up several times, too. The fact that DS is still even on the horizon despite that is a GOOD thing.
About Pirates 4, I do hear you, and I would MUCH rather have had Johnny do DS before Pirates. But you are comparing Jerry Bruckheimer-- arguably one of the biggest sharks in the business, a behemoth like Disney, and a history of the first 3 Pirates films making something like 3 billion dollars worldwide, with Johnny's own production company and what will most probably be a MUCH smaller budget for DS (even if they will be curtailing the budget for Pirates 4). Johnny and Tim have a lot of respect, but I wouldn't say they have anywhere close to the power of Bruckheimer. Bruckheimer probably pushed like the devil, and it so happened that Pirates 4 got put in place first. I just don't see how this is at all indicative of WB or Johnny or Tim "not caring" about DS.
If Tim's schedule was too much of a problem, and they had to get another director, I seriously doubt that it would speed things up. Very likely, it would slow things down even more. I doubt there many top quality directors just sitting around waiting for a project to come along. When DS was first announced, I thought of Guillermo del Toro for the director, but he's going to be tied up for awhile with some hobbit film
Johnny had a project called Shantaram in the works for several years, and the fact that they had to change directors (from Peter Weir to Mira Nair) pushed the project back for a year. Other events happened after that, and the project is currently in limbo, but I'm just saying that changing directors did push back the plans they had at the time.
I know that I've said all of these things many times before, so I apologize for continuing to repeat myself.
Cathy