Disney’s Bob Iger On ‘Pirates’ Ransom Demand: “To Our Knowledge We Were Not Hacked”

Seems that those alleged Pirates pirates might have been all bluster and no blunderbuss. Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger said in an interview today that he doesn’t believe the threat to the high-profile summer tentpole Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales was real.

“To our knowledge we were not hacked,” he told Yahoo Finance. “We had a threat of a hack of a movie being stolen. We decided to take it seriously but not react in the manner in which the person who was threatening us had required.” Watch video on the interview above.

Hackers had claimed that they stole a digital copy of the Johnny Depp film and would release bits of it online — in increments — if their demands for an enormous amount of Bitcoin money weren’t met. Disney was working with the FBI and had made it clear it would not pay.

“We don’t believe that it was real and nothing has happened,” Igor said in the interview. But he added, “In today’s world, cyber security is a front burner issue.”

The seafaring action sequel sets sail in theaters tomorrow for Memorial Day weekend. The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has pulled in a whopping $3.72 billion in worldwide box office since first launching in 2003.