USA Lands Broadcast Rights To Pirates Sequel

Disney’s Buena Vista TV has sold Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End to USA Network for a license fee of about $28 million in the network window, reports Variety. USA pursued the film with cutthroat fervor because it had bought the rights to the first two “Pirates” movies. The network piled up the highest rating for a theatrical movie in USA’S 27-year history when it aired the first of the Pirates movies, Curse of the Black Pearl, last year.

At World’s End becomes available to USA in September 2009 for a five-year license term. Within the span of that five-year period, however, USA has allowed Buena Vista to sell as many as three separate one-run windows of “At World’s End” to a broadcast or a cable network, which could pump another $8 million or more in license fees into the studio’s coffers. Before it gets to USA, At World’s End will begin its pay-TV premiere next summer on Starz.