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Plus, they've got too much on what with Full Throttle 2 and Grim Fandango 2 in the works.

They could make it a PotC film, like with Stanger Tides. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Secret of Monkey Island. Just instead of Guybrush, we'd have some young lad who's good with a sword and had a more palatable name. As a twist, this guy doesn't want to be a pirate. Elaine would not be the governor, but rather a governor's daughter, because audiences gotta find it believable, you know (/s). LeChuck is a silly name so they give him a more piratey name, but keep his ghost crew. Secret has a lot of cool characters, but it would be costly to hire a good actor for everybody, so like in most movie adaptions, let's consolidate the most memorable characters: Guybrush's crew is just one guy. He's a pirate that not-Guybrush has to break out of prison and beat in a sword fight, and he has tattoos. The bird touching is silly so as a callback to fans, we just give him the name of a bird. If he flails his arms around wildly while he talks, and talks in a very fast confusing way and is a master of convincing people of half truths, we got Stan in there too. Actually, the whole "Monkey" Island is silly sounding and doesn't invoke piracy at all. We simply rename Monkey Island to the Island of the Dead, give LeChuck a monkey sidekick and name another island after an animal that's more piraty than a monkey, e.g. a turtle. Where's my money Disney?

Just a couple years back, they proposed doing a "reboot" with Margot Robbie as the lead. I think that IP is much more universally recognizable and lucrative in conjunction with the theme parks. I can't see Disney with two competing pirate movie franchises, unless they somehow make a resurgence and replace the current superhero trend. Yeah, it kind of makes me think of that recent Willow Disney+ reboot. Which wasn't a success with the legacy fans and failed to engage the younger ones. I think this new Lucasfilm doesn't really know what the hell they're doing and will probably stick with what works for them for the foreseeable future: which is Star Wars, as far as the eye can see. See, this is exactly the kind of thing I wish they would have made, back when the iron was still "hot." It might have just been a one-off film (like lots of animated films of the '90s), but it would have been a cult classic for sure. And probably lured a generation of kids towards the point-and-click genre. Which might have revitalized and fueled it for awhile longer, etc. I understand wanting Monkey Island to remain a niche thing that only adventure gamers know about, but there are other ways it could have thrived, too. Just like Sam & Max, which had comic books and a TV show and a shitload of games over the years, but still hasn't burned its goodwill towards fans (in my opinion). Let's face it, Monkey Island was never going to be the next Indiana Jones or Star Wars cash cow. And while we're at it, remember the attempt to make Maniac Mansion into a sitcom in the '90s? It actually made it even more weird and niche, somehow. And we still only have two of those games in existence, which haven't lost their classic status.

It does make you wonder what the franchise would look like today if that spielberg monkey island movie happened in the 90s. I imagine it would be unrecognisable. The curse style would definitely have stuck around if nothing else.

Disney is on its fourth, I believe, attempt at a Haunted Mansion film. That’s partly because none have quite hit the PotC smash, but it’s also because Disney’s park IP is reliable and has decades of history that seems perennial. It’s world recognized IP with attractions on almost every continent. PotC will get rebooted in five/ten years without Johnny Depp as soon as their is a hip new director or action star wanting to take a stab at it. Monkey Island is a niche of a niche of IP that counts the original PotC attraction as upstream inspiration. Why would Disney ever make a Monkey Island film? Everybody already knows PotC, the brand, the attraction, etc. Lack of Johnny Depp isn’t going stop Disney. They might realize that Depp was a lightning in a bottle casting choice that they are unlikely to repeat, but the attraction existed decades before the Johnny Depp movies and will likely survive decades after them too. I’d love to see a Monkey Island film or a Disney+ show. Those are “take my money” grabhands ideas. I’ve even joked for several years now that I’d happily consult on a Disney+ show because I figured you could run Sea of Thieves directly in Disney’s “The Volume” space and do it as Live Action cartoonish realism on the relatively cheap. (The Volume uses Unreal engine primarily and SoT is Unreal as well and I think even the islands that aren’t specifically built for Monkey Island references look fitting for Monkey Island side tales.) I don’t see Disney actually doing anything like that at all though because they own PotC and that is IP with history and weight. Monkey Island is just a silly little thing to Disney they happen to own only by accident of buying Star Wars.

Eh, nothing 'needs' to exist. Honestly if you offered me a world where no new Monkey Island things were created, or a world where 100 new Monkey Island things were created and 95 of them were terrible and 5 were great, I'd take the world where I get 5 great Monkey Island things and happily moan about the rest. At least it would be something to talk about.

I see both Return and the Sea of Thieves things as two opportunities that came up, where someone was willing to say yes. Those two points existing out in space don’t mean a line has been formed that we can extrapolate an trajectory out from, let alone a slippery slope. Whether you are excited about the Legend event or wary of it or resent it or anything else, it’s still a one-off thing clearly made by people excited to get to do this work. Maybe one day this will all be craven and horrible but that’s not the vibe I get at all right now.

I think people are massively overestimating how much ReMI was even ... noticed financially by Disney honestly. I do not believe in a world where they looked at what happened with ReMI, and gleefully set about seeing how else they can exploit this. I mean, for a start Sea of Thieves already had its mini-MI tribute long before ReMI. I do believe in a world where they saw that ReMI did fine and decided 'sure, we can afford to throw this name around a little more, it seems low risk' i.e. at best the existence of ReMI vaguely greased some wheels. But let's be honest, Monkey Island is not in the same league as a Star Wars and Indy, and never will be. It's not even in the league below. It's a minor game series which was fairly popular in the early 90s and gained a bit of a cult following, and has had a couple of revivals. Heck, even if Disney sticks a Monkey Island series on Disney+ and casts Chris Pratt as Guybrush Threepwood, I promise you it's because some exec went rogue on some passion project and it somehow passed through all the usual filters. No disney exec with dollar signs in their eyes is looking hungrily at Monkey Island.

Here's hoping this at the very least brings about some "new" Monkey Island music (or at least some new takes on old tunes).

It seems that the rubber chicken scene is not on the way to hook island, but going down(?) to Stan's. At least that what it looks like to me. I hope they don't mess up the locations to much.