LOS ANGELES -- Disney hired Johnny Depp to give them something different in "Pirates of the Caribbean," and, boy, did he deliver.

"It probably scared some of the [studio] executives the first time they saw the dailies because he's so far out there," producer Jerry Bruckheimer said. "I'm sure they were saying, 'Oh, my gosh, we've got a pirate with mascara on! What are they doing down there in the Caribbean?'"

Bruckheimer wasn't making fun of the nervous execs. Most of the people involved with the project were taken aback the first time they encountered Capt. Jack Sparrow, a freewheeling rogue pirate whom Depp describes as a cross between rock 'n' roller Keith Richards and cartoon skunk Pepe Le Pew.

And that's not mascara, although Depp admits it might look that way. But more about that later. First, the star had to deal with the executives' impending ulcers.

"They were worried that I was ruining the movie," he said of the comic adventure, which opens Wednesday. "I told them: 'You hired me to do a job. I know this character, and I think I can build a character you'll like. But you've got to trust me. And if you can't trust me, you've got to fire me.' "

The studio backed off, but there were still plenty of raised eyebrows over Depp's freehand characterization.

"I don't think anyone was expecting that," writer Ted Elliott said. "If I were forced to choose between the Jack Sparrow I wrote and the Jack Sparrow he created, I'd pick what he did. But it was nothing at all like I imagined."

Shattered expectations are exactly what Bruckheimer, whose previous movies for Disney include "Remember the Titans" and "Pearl Harbor," was looking for when he hired Depp, Geoffrey Rush and Orlando Bloom to star and Gore Verbinski ("The Mexican") to direct.

"Those are not names you usually associate with Disney," he said. "That's why we went after them. When you hear those names, you realize that something is different."

One big difference is that it's the first time the Disney logo has been on a movie rated PG-13. In the past, the studio's harder-edged movies were released under its Touchstone Pictures banner, preserving the "family film" image of the Walt Disney name. The studio went back and forth on the issue, but because the movie is based on a Disneyland attraction, executives figured people would assume it was a Disney movie regardless of what the credits said.

Of course, the name of the movie could have been changed, but the studio wasn't about to give up such a strong marketing tie.

"The Pirates of the Caribbean [ride] is a piece of mental real estate that everyone has," said Elliott, one of the writers of "Aladdin."

Nor did the studio tell them to tone down the violence. There are no scenes of blood spurting or heads exploding, but people do get stabbed in sword fights and hit by cannon fire.

"The studio never told us that we had to try to get a PG rating," Elliott said. "We wrote the story we wanted to write."

Creating a character

Then the studio called in Depp, a force Bruckheimer jokingly referred to as the anti-Walt Disney. Take one look at Capt. Jack and it's clear that he's no Snow White.

"The first scene we shot, he comes staggering up the dock and I think, 'Oh my gosh! He's playing the character drunk!' " recalled Bloom ("The Lord of the Rings" trilogy).

No, Capt. Jack is not drunk, Depp said. He's fried.