In 2001 Jay Wolpert wrote a script based on the Pirates of the Caribbean theme park ride, but Disney producer Jerry Bruckheimer rejected it as a straight pirate movie. In March 2002 Bruckheimer brought in Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, who had pitched a pirate film based on the ride in the early 1990s, and they suggested a supernatural curse as the plot. Studio chief Michael Eisner was reluctant about the budget and wanted to remove overt ride references, and he also forced the subtitle The Curse of the Black Pearl onto the film over director Gore Verbinski's objections. Johnny Depp was cast after Jack Sparrow was originally written for Hugh Jackman, and Depp based his performance on Keith Richards after researching 18th-century pirates. Executives were confused by his choices, and at one point Eisner said he was ruining the film. Geoffrey Rush was cast as Barbossa after Robert De Niro turned the role down.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.