Back when I was in London, word had it Tim Burton was in pre-production on his Alice in Wonderland -- but it seems the director has begun shooting some of his live-action scenes for the film, and a bunch of spy photos featuring Mia Wasikowska (Alice) have arrived online via INF. The images also include shots of Burton's main squeeze Helena Bonham Carter whose baby is all dressed up in period garb ... preparing for a cameo, perhaps? Of course, Johnny Depp was just officially announced as the Mad Hatter, and the final product will be a mix of live action and motion-capture animation. One imagines the scenes featuring Alice before she arrives in Wonderland (ie: these two photos) will be shot in live action, with the majority of the Wonderland stuff all in motion-capture. Oooh, this flick is gonna be freaky ...



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[via Slashfilm]

With the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, it was pretty much inevitable that more would come our way. But it wasn't all signed, dotted, and crossed until now. Variety reports that Johnny Depp has finally signed on for a fourth film. I can only hope that this time around, he gets the passion and the girl. Or at the very least, I hope she doesn't pick a bland dude who lacks charisma and chemistry instead. Ick.

But that's not all, folks! Depp, with a big ol' soft spot for iconic roles lately, has signed on for one more (two if you count Mad Hatter in Burton's Alice in Wonderland). As briefly reported yesterday, he's also going to play Tonto as part of Jerry Bruckheimer's adaptation of The Lone Ranger. The man must like his Bruck. I'm glad he's part Cherokee so there's more basis to this pick than just "Holy crap Depp is awesome and brings in big money!" But that leaves a pressing question:

We still don't have the Lone dude himself. Is there an actor out there who would make a good Lone Ranger, AND be able to fight his way out of Depp's talented shadow? Weigh in below!

Johnny Depp never forgets his director friends. According to Variety, he's teaming up again with his Pirates of the Caribbean main man, Gore Verbinski, for Paramount's animated feature Rango. The movie will realize the dreams of thousands (nay, millions) of women worldwide as it casts Depp in the role of household pet. He'll go on an adventure to discover his true self -- which, I think, involves discovering he is Johnny Depp, commander of women.

Verbinski cooked up the story himself, but gave the writing job to John Logan. He will direct the movie as a nice relaxing break from adapting Bioshock. Some of us do yoga, some of us direct Paramounts "most ambitious star-driven entry into animation."
The effects will be handled by ILM, who did such brilliant work on Pirates' Davy Jones. According to Verbinski himself, Rango will be using top-notch CG techniques "that will allow us to capture and translate every aspect of Johnny's performance, using it to drive the computer-generated character in a way that has yet to be seen in an animated feature." This sounds kind of terrifying to me -- Depp's household pet is left unspecified in the article, and I now have a vision of a dog or a turtle with Depp's face. Or they are going the Angelina Jolie / Beowulf route.

All joking aside, I do think another Depp and Verbinski pair-up can only yield good results -- and it will be fun to see (hear?) Depp do more voice work. The movie starts production this January, and is slated for a March 2011 release.

What can we say -- it's MTV hour here on Cinematical. While grabbing any and every actor ever involved in a superhero film during the Toronto International Film Festival, MTV managed to get a kinda sorta confirmation from Michael Caine that both Johnny Depp and Philip Seymour Hoffman were being considered for the roles of Riddler and Penguin in the next Batman movie. I know, we've gone over this already -- they're just rumors -- but according to Caine, a Warner Bros. executive backed it all up.

Here's what he told MTV: "I was with [a Warner Bros.] executive and I said, 'Are we going to make another one?' They said yeah. I said, 'How the hell are we going to top Heath? And he says 'I'll tell you how you top Heath - Johnny Depp as The Riddler and Philip Seymour Hoffman as The Penguin.' I said, 'S–t, they've done it again!'"

Of course, said exec could be talking hypothetically, in a "We top Heath by bringing on two more A-listers to play two popular villains" sorta way. Seeing as there's no script and no deal for Christopher Nolan (yet), I'm pretty sure they're not at the stage where offers are going out. But it is reassuring to see the studio listening to the fans and actively pursuing a way to "top Heath" -- know what I mean? Then again, maybe both Depp and Hoffman know more than they're letting on ...

Whaddya think?

At last, the focus of at least one obsessive Batman 3 rumor has adressed. Johnny Depp was recently on a Florida radio show promoting the reunion show of his band, The Kids. (I know how the girls love Johnny, you can listen to the entire interview in two parts here.) A persistent fan called into the station to remind them to ask Depp about playing the Riddler for Christopher Nolan.

Depp's answer was essentially a denial and as enigmatic as well, the Riddler. "Oh yeah I heard about that. Not that I know of. It seems like it'd be a fun gig for a while, yeah."

A denial isn't surprising since we know Nolan isn't even signed, let alone writing or casting. But given that the rumor machine is going regardless of that fact, here's more fuel for the fire. There's no doubt Depp would do a fine job. He could probably play me to perfection. And he's open to taking just about any role that interests him. So, those of you keeping score can mark Depp as "interested" and various news agencies that don't read these things carefully can report it as "confirmed." For my part, I'm going to go ahead and tell my sister that Depp is "totally doing Batman 3" because that's one way to interest her in the franchise. Except then she'll start working on a Riddler costume for a certain lookalike. Never mind, then.

[Thanks to The Comic Book Cynic for sending this to us.]

While Heath Ledger's role as Joker in The Dark Knight might go down as his last (and greatest) complete role, technically his final performance will come in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. In a weird way it's almost fitting that Gilliam -- who's been cursed for years now -- would wind up being the filmmaker to last work with Ledger. Not only has Ledger's next-to-last film broken almost every box office record to date, but folks are so afraid of a Gilliam flick that even with the marketing machine that is the death of Heath Ledger, Hollywood still doesn't want to go near Dr. Parnassus.

A story in The Hollywood Reporter last week claims Ledger could be in a "position of having one of the biggest- grossing movies in Hollywood history out at the same time he's in a movie hunting for an domestic distribution deal." And the scary part of this is that when Ledger passed away, Hollywood heavyweights like Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell stepped in to finish the film for their deceased friend. With ALL THAT, it's still a risky movie to get behind. One "distribution guru" added, "For all the elements in this film, it is a Terry Gilliam picture, and as much as you want a movie of his to be good, you have to be careful." Poor Gilliam ... the guy just can't catch a break.

Well, unless you want to see Dr. Parnassus. Wouldn't it be kinda spooky if one death helped revive another's career? If we, as an audience, had the ability to choose between the doom and gloom of mourning an actor's death or the light and joy that comes with helping a beloved filmmaker get back on track?

It's been a while since we heard anything about Johnny Depp's second foray into the world of comic book adaptation, otherwise known as Rex Mundi. Back in 2006, Depp purchased the rights to Arvid Nelson's Dark Horse series under his Infinitum Nihil banner, with the intention to star as Dr. Julien Sauniere.

To refresh your memory, Rex Mundi is set in an alternate history where Martin Luther was assassinated, the Reformation never took place, and the Catholic Church still reigns supreme. The comics take place in the 1930's, in a world where the Inquisition still runs rampant, Europe is ruled by monarchs, but magic manages to exist. Into this walks Dr. Sauniere, who finds himself investigating the disappearance of a medieval scroll, and a trail of horrific ritual murders. You can find out more on its official site, if you're interested. Depp was drawn to the project not because he's a comic reader, but because he's keenly interested in the Templar Knights, and "loves that kind of research" according to Barry Levine, who's co-producing.

According to MTV, Rex now has a script, penned by Jim Uhls, and is looking for a director. Depp has been right in the thick of all the decision making, says his co-producer Barry Levine. "The second draft is now coming in from Jim, and Warner Bros. is pretty excited about it. They came up with a couple of names for directors, so now we just need Johnny to look at the list. It all begins and ends with Johnny. He's got to be happy with the script, and he gave his notes, so we'll see what happens next."

It's been a ridiculously long and challenging road for Terry Gilliam once he set out to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. After the infamous struggles during the first round, he was potentially getting his second chance back in 2005. Then he was working to get the script back in late 2005, and still fighting for it in 2007, and even remained hopeful at the beginning of this year. It's been a big, long wait that has most certainly ousted the Little Train That Could for the icon with the most determination and perseverance.

If the Independent is right, Don Quixote is headed for production soon. In a discussion with Gilliam, he said: "As far as we're concerned, it's on. When Johnny's ready, we're ready. We're just talking about dates to film. Basically, it all depends on his schedule, but otherwise we're set. It will be next year some time, before next summer anyway." The production will be completely re-shot, using none of the plagued footage from 2000: "The intervening years have taught me that I can actually write a much better film. I'm so excited it's going to get done at last."

Here's to hoping it's smooth sailing from now on.

Last night Cinematical's James Rocchi was a guest on G4's Attack of the Show, where he and Chris Hardwick spoke about all those crazy Batman rumors spreading like wildfire across the internet. Ya know, how Angelina Jolie supposedly wants to play Catwoman, Philip Seymour Hoffman as the Penguin and/or Johnny Depp as Riddler.

As James points out, these are all "just rumors" right now and there's no way of telling which characters Christopher Nolan and his screenwriter brother Jonathan Nolan have in mind without actually speaking to them. It should be noted that Cinematical has also confirmed that Chris Nolan currently does not have a deal to direct a third film, and if he does hop onboard, they'll have to negotiate something first. But enough of my babbling, check out James above, and much thanks to Attack of the Show for inviting us on.

The movie Be Kind Rewind is being released on DVD today. Even if you didn't see the movie, you probably remember the delightful trailer, in which Jack Black and Mos Def shoot their own low-budget, low-everything versions of blockbusters like Ghostbusters and Driving Miss Daisy. In addition, another movie about the joy of making movies is still playing in some theaters -- Son of Rambow, where two boys are inspired to shoot their own version of Rambo complete with flying dogs, nursing-home residents bribed as actors, and a fabulous French exchange student.

I can think of dozens of enjoyable movies about moviemaking (and a few clunkers, but we'll ignore them for today). But I decided to focus on seven of the most characteristic films. I didn't include films about screenwriters, because I think those would be fun to list another time, or films about moviegoing like Cinema Paradiso. Instead, I focused on the inspired and sometimes crazed filmmakers. Afterwards, you can tell me which of your favorites I left off the list.