With Scott Cooper calling the shots and rewriting Mark Mallouk's script, the film is gathering quite the cast around Depp. Guy Pearce is aboard as Bill, Bulger's brother who became a Massachusetts Senate president and power broker, while Joel Edgerton is John Connolly, a childhood friend of the family who worked for the FBI and ended up tipping Bulger off that the bureau was set to arrest him.
Johnson is set to play Lindsey Cyr, who met the mobster when she was 21 and he was 36. They began a long-standing relationship and even had a son, Douglas, together. But their parental joy was overshadowed by tragedy when Douglas died aged six.
In addition to 50 Shades and this new project, Johnson will be seen in Michael Almereyda's Shakespeare film, Cymbeline, in which she plays Imogen.