Johnny Depp Adds Three More Projects to the Pile

By  · Published on July 12th, 2011

Like most giant stars, Johnny Depp is attached to far more projects than he could ever appear in, so any news of upcoming development is near meaningless. With that in mind, here are three more pieces of meat that Depp is adding to his plate.

Slashfilm is reporting that he’ll be continuing his engrossing and high grossing relationship with Disney by developing an adaptation of the 1970s made-for-TV movie The Night Stalker which features a journalist who starts to believe that serial killings in and around Las Vegas are actually the work of a vampire (which sounds curiously like the new Fright Night). Along with The Mouse, Depp is also trying to bring the story of Paul Revere’s midnight ride to life. Here’s hoping he doesn’t do all his research for it on Wikipedia.

If that weren’t enough, Depp wants to start moving on In the Hand of Dante with Julian Schnabel as the director. According to The Playlist, the project isn’t exactly official, but Depp owns the rights, and Schnabel claims, “We’re gonna work on writing it, developing it.” The story, adapted from the book by Nick Tosches splits its time between Dante finding inspiration to write his “Divine Comedy” in the 14th century and a fictionalized Nick Tosches sinking into the underworld in 2001.

It’s unclear whether any of these projects will ever see cameras roll, or if Depp will be in front of them when they do, but there are definitely some interesting concepts here. The world can probably live without more vampires, but an Early American-set action adventure could be a lot of fun, and anything about tortured Sicilian writers descending into a personal Hell has certainly got some meat on its bones.

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