Look at The Hollywood Reporter getting all speculative and handing out rumors and speculation. I don’t know about you, but I have seen a steady change in both THR and Variety recently, and while Variety still continues to refer to anything originating from an online source as “Internet chatter” they have now started their own little publicity group as they send out daily emails alerting websites to their new casting announcements. The online world is a changing folks… just hope I can keep up…
As for this new little blurb out of THR it has to do with a couple of high profile names and openings in their schedules. First there is Johnny Depp who has seen two projects go by the wayside thanks to the writers strike (Shantaram and The Rum Diaries) leaving him with an opening in his schedule for a new feature.
As luck would have it, Michael Mann believes his spy thriller for Columbia, Edwin A. Salt, needs a rewrite, opening up a slot in his sked for a screen adaptation of Brian Burrough’s nonfiction book “Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34” for Universal. At one point Leonardo DiCaprio was set to head up the project, but he is working on Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island with the likes of Mark Ruffalo and Ben Kingsley.
So, word is Depp and Mann are getting together to work out the possibilities. Word is that Depp would be playing the role of bank robber John Dillinger. The book follows the transformation of the FBI as the U.S. government tried to stop the 1933 crime spree headed up by gangsters John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, the Barkers and Bonnie and Clyde.
Actually, on a side note, if Bonnie and Clyde is your thing you may be interested in the newly announced Bonnie and Clyde (Ultimate Collector’s Edition) DVD.
Of course this is all speculation, but a teaming of Mann and Depp is exciting to me, and after Mann delivered the lackluster Miami Vice it would be nice to get another one of his films in theaters ASAP.
