All you Johnny Depp junkies

First Showing reports that Disney has locked up Johnny Depp for the following projects: 

* Alice In Wonderland (as the Mad Hatter)

* The Lone Ranger (as Tonto)

* Pirates of the Caribbean IV (as you know how)

We saw some funky early concept art from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, which will feature a combination of CGI and live-action visuals. Johnny Depp’s involvement has been rumored for quite some time, considering he has starred in almost all of Burton’s recent films. As for the Lone Ranger announcement, that definitely came out of nowhere. We knew the film was in development, but that’s it. And last but not least, early discussion about a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie is also news that has been rumored for a while, considering the third film made over $300 million last summer.

Who’s writing The Lone Ranger? None other than probably the best, most commercial writing team in Hwood today: Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio. Of course, they transformed a theme park ride — “Pirates of the Caribbean” — into a hit movie franchise. We may expect the same with The Lone Ranger.

By the way, The Lone Ranger began as a radio series, then moved to TV in the early 50s starring actor Clayton Moore. Here is Wikipedia article on the franchise.