By design, pirates are meant to seek out treasure. But when Captain Jack Sparrow returns to Caribbean waters this summer, he'll find that his already dingy wealth of resources have become... well, even less wealthy.

According to a report in The Los Angeles Times, Disney's new studio chairman Rich Ross has significantly scaled back the production budget on Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the fourth installment in the Johnny Depp-starring franchise set to begin shooting on June 14. Although the film's budget is still quite large — north of $200 million, the LA Times indicates — it's also "at least a third less than the last Pirates movie and includes far fewer shooting days and visual effects shots."

The article cites the fragile economic climate as a reason for the budget cuts, with producer Jerry Bruckheimer describing of Ross' approach: "He wants to be mean and lean and make these movies very entertaining but also very cost effective."

For an alternate perspective, Pirates director Rob Marshall — fresh off of Nine and new to Disney's flagship series — said of the film's production budget: "This is by far the biggest budget I've ever work with."

As the last two movies were far from fantastic and this latest outing still has more than $200 million to its name, it's hard to shed a tear for the Pirates crew. There's plenty of talent attached to the project including Depp, Marshall, Penelope Cruz, Ian McShane and the returning Geoffrey Rush, so the film should sink or swim regardless of the financial backing — and if Jack Sparrow has taught us anything over the past decade, it's that he's quite the savvy problem solver, budget be damned.