FROM SWEENEY
TODD TO JOHNNY DILLINGER, DEPP KEEPS KNOCKING 'EM DEAD
EQUALLY AT EASE AS A BRITISH
SLASHER OR AN AMERICAN GANGSTER, JOHNNY DEPP CERTAINLY KNOWS HOW
TO MAKE MURDER PAY. BELOW, DETAILS ON THIS PAIR OF KILLER PIX, PLUS
OTHER NEW DEPP PROJECTS.
SWEENEY
TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET: Johnny
Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Sacha Baron Cohen, Timothy
Spall, Christopher Lee, Jamie Bower, Jayne Wisener, Laura Michelle
Kelly, Ed Sanders, Michael N. Harbour, Peter Bowles, Anthony Head,
Ian Burford (Directed by Tim Burton; Written by John Logan; DreamWorks
and Paramount) From “Edward Scissorhands” to “Ed
Wood,” Johnny Depp and his favorite director, Tim Burton,
have never been afraid to come across as creepy. Even so, it’s
a jolt to learn that their sixth collaboration will be “Sweeney
Todd,” the film version of Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 musical
about the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, an ex-con who slashes the
throats of his customers in order to supply ingredients for the
succulent pies to be baked and sold by his equally demonic mate
(Helena Bonham Carter, whose casting surely had nothing to do with
the fact that she is the mom of Billy-Ray Burton, son of the film's
director). Sing out, Johnny! Now Playing
PUBLIC
ENEMIES: Johnny Depp (Directed
by Michael Mann; Universal) John Dillinger was not as scary as Sweeney
Todd, but don't be surprised if Johnny Depp makes the gun-toting
terror of thirties Chicago almost as chilling as he makes the demon
barber of Fleet Street in Tim Burton's current musical. “Public
Enemies” is based on the book by Bryan Burrough about FBI
biggie J. Edgar Hoover's crusade to bring Dillinger and other dirty
rotten scoundrels to justice. At one point, Leonardo DiCaprio was
reportedly in discussion with director Michael Mann about participating
in this project. If he's still available, somebody should tell him
that the plum role of Baby Face Nelson has yet to be cast. Opening
date to be announced
THE RUM
DIARY: Johnny Depp, Josh Hartnett,
Benicio del Toro, Nick Nolte (Written and directed by Bruce Robinson;
FilmEngine) It’s been nearly 10 years since Johnny Depp played
Raoul Duke, a hell-raising journalist, in the film version of Hunter
S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”
Nobody, including the author, believed that Duke was anyone other
than Thompson himself. Now Depp is playing Paul Kemp, an eccentric
reporter in “The Rum Diary,” the autobiographical novel
the late Hunter published when he was 22. Set in San Juan, Puerto
Rico, during the fifties, “Diary” depicts the chaotic,
booze-and-drugs fueled adventures of a brawling Hunteresque freelancer
from New York who tries to twist himself into a latter-day Hemingway.
Playing his unruly expatriate pals: Nick Nolte, Benicio del Toro
and Josh Hartnett. Sounds like a high time will be had by all. To
read Guy Flatley's 1979 interview with Nick Nolte, click
here. Opening date to be
announced
SHANTARAM:
Johnny Depp, Emily Watson, Franka Potente
(Directed by Mira Nair; Written by Eric Roth and Gregrory David
Roth; Warner Bros.) An Australian named Lindsay (Johnny Depp) has
a major heroin habit which sends him to what promises to be a long,
harsh term of imprisonment. As in the Gregory David Roberts novel
from which this drama stems, however, Lindsay escapes and lands
in a crime-crammed Bombay slum, where he manages to pass himself
off as a crackerjack physician--one who engages in gunrunning and
smuggling in order to give his poor patients the kind of care they
so richly deserve. The next stage of Lindsay’s physical and
spiritual journey is Afghanistan, where he joins the insurgents
in their struggle to oust the Russians. Tomorrow Iraq? Peter Weir,
who was set to direct "Shantaram," dropped out when the
folks at Warner Bros. informed him that his take on the material
was all wrong. He was replaced by Mira Nair, director of "Monsoon
Wedding" and "The Namesake." Opening
date to be announced
SASHA'S
STORY: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A RUSSIAN SPY: Johnny
Depp (Warner Bros.) Will moviegoers glut themselves on a double
serving of the true-life tragedy of Alexander “Sasha”
Litvinenko, the KGB agent-turned-superspy who suffered a hideous
death last November after dining on sushi containing polonium-210?
Possibly so, if both Warner Bros. and Columbia follow through with
plans to fast-track competing versions of the same raw-deal tale.
The Warner Bros. project, "Sasha's Story: The Life and Death
of a Russian Spy," is based on a Doubleday book being written
by Alan Cowell, the New York Times bureau chief who has covered
the story extensively for The Times. It’s extremely likely
that Johnny Depp, whose Infinitum Nihil production company is partnered
with Warner Bros., will play the bigger-than-life character who,
on his deathbed, accused Vladimir Putin of plotting his murder.
While the people at Columbia will not have the pleasure of Johnny
Depp’s company on their Litvinenko take, they will surely
be working with solid pros, starting at the top with director Michael
Mann, and including Marina Litvinenko, the former spy’s widow,
and Alex Goldfarb, her collaborator on “Death of a Dissident,”
a book scheduled to be published by Free Press, a Simon & Schuster
subsidiary, in May. No word on who’ll play Litvinenko in “Death
of a Dissident.” But the names of Tom Cruise and Sacha Baron
Cohen do flutter to mind. Opening date
to be announced
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