That Disney-produced update of The Lone Ranger we first reported on two years ago still exists, apparently, and today Deadline reports that it’s become a veritable Pirates Of The Caribbean reunion, with Gore Verbinski directing and Jerry Bruckheimer producing a script from Pirates writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rosso, and Johnny Depp interested in playing Tonto, but only if he can make him sound like a cross between Raul Julia and Truman Capote. Just kidding—but doesn’t that seem like a demand Johnny Depp would make? He probably knows that this film will live or die based on his participation—and his slight touch of Cherokee ancestry, which would surely get prominent placement in all of the attendant PR spin, would go a long way toward quelling the inevitable backlash from Native American groups—so he may as well get his jollies on this one.
Now they just have to figure out who will play Tarzan and Frankenstein.