It's no secret that Disney will try to turn Prince of Persia into a franchise the size of Pirates of the Caribbean. Unfortunately, based on the new trailer, I think they'll have a tough time doing it.

Persia has a The Mummy meets POTC vibe to it, and I think mainstream audiences will eat it up for the most part. But Jake Gyllenhaal seems ill suited to carrying a franchise like this. Gyllenhaal has delivered some fine performances in character dramas such as Moonlight Mile and Zodiac, but he just seems lost here. Orlando Bloom also looked slightly lost in the POTC films, but he had Johnny Depp to back him up. All Gyllenhaal has is Sir Ben Kingsley and Alfred Molina camping it up. Make no mistake, Kingsley and Molina are great actors and they deserve to have fun in a paycheck role every so often. Yet they don't bring the same level of mainstream appeal that Depp does.

Persia represents yet another attempt to turn a video game franchise into a film franchise. While it certainly doesn't look as bad as Super Mario Bros., it also doesn't appear to be a game-changer for this type of adaptation. There are plenty of lucrative video game properties out there and some day somebody will hit an adaptation out of the park and make tons of cash in the process.

Persia will be forced to share space in the multiplexes with Sex and the City 2 when they both open on May 28, 2010. It'll be a typical summer weekend, to be sure. Both films will manage to find their respective audiences without hurting each other.