When director Gore Verbinski needed to cast the leading role in his new film RANGO, he chose Johnny Depp for the top of the bill . . . not exactly surprising, as their previous venture together, the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN trilogy, not only allowed them to develop a good working relationship but also amassed some $2.7 billion at the box office. For an encore, the intrepid duo will leave the high seas for the animation studio. Johnny Depp will supply the voice and body language for “a household pet”–according to Claudia Piller of the LA Times, a chameleon–“that goes on an adventure to discover its true self.”

Paramount will finance and distribute the feature-length animated film, rumored to carry a budget in the $150-million range. According to the LA Times, Paramount “now has a solid track record marketing and distributing big animated pictures through its deal with DreamWorks Animation.” Their recent successes include last year’s SHREK THE THIRD and this summer’s KUNG FU PANDA.

RANGO will be Gore Verbinski’s first full-length animated film, and it will feature cutting-edge technology from the wizards at Industrial Light & Magic 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,” Verbinski told Variety. RANGO will reunite the director with another key member of the PIRATES crew: ILM’s visual effects supervisor John Knoll, who garnered an Oscar nomination for each installment of the POTC trilogy, and took home the award in 2007. “ILM previously worked with Verbinski to create the octopus-faced Davy Jones character played by Bill Nighy in the PIRATES pics,” notes Variety; it will be intriguing to see what they design for RANGO.

John Logan, whose credits include the scripts for SWEENEY TODD, THE AVIATOR, and GLADIATOR, is writing the RANGO screenplay, which is based on an idea by Verbinski. RANGO will be produced by Verbinski’s Blind Wink Productions; Graham King, whose GK Films developed the project; and John Carls.

The Zone thanks Savvypiratemonky and Emma for breaking the news; you can read more about RANGO on the News & Views forum. To see Variety’s announcement of the project, CLICK HERE.

Present plans have Johnny Depp reporting for work on RANGO in January 2009, with the film scheduled to bow in theaters in March 2011. The Zone sends our congratulations and best wishes to everyone involved with bringing RANGO to the big screen. –Part-Time Poet