“Johnny Depp swashbuckles his way into a 4th Pirates movie,” blares the headline in the newest issue of Entertainment Weekly, dated October 10, 2008. The feature (by Steve Daly) mainly focuses on the projects announced by Dick Cook at the Disney Showcase last week: the 4th Pirates of the Caribbean film (“Never mind that a new script isn’t ready yet, or that original trilogy director Gore Verbinski is busy developing a major Universal thriller, BioShock” ), and the new version of The Lone Ranger, in which Johnny will play the Native American Tonto–“though once again, there is no finished script, set of costars, or director in place,” EW observes.

We get the point, EW: it will be many months before either of these projects is ready to film. But that can’t be said about JD’s third Disney venture, playing the Mad Hatter for good friend Tim Burton in his “part-live-action, part-motion-capture, part-CG, and mostly 3-D version of Alice in Wonderland.” Now that Burton has concluded his location work in England, production on Alice–due in theaters in March 2010–shifts to the Los Angeles area: “Depp ‘s role will be filmed mainly on West Coast soundstages,” notes EW . . . no doubt a requirement for the “part motion-capture, part-CG, and mostly 3-D” sections of the movie.

After noting the box-office potential of the Disney projects, EW concedes, “It’s amazing that Depp has been able to anchor corporatized blockbusters like these without being seen as a sellout. [. . . E]ven when indirectly hawking products and rides, he maintains his edgy cool.” The Zone thanks Emma for the article text and FANtasticJD for posting scans of EW; you can see both on the News & Views forum. –Part-Time Poet