Empire loves Johnny Depp.
Empire loves Michael Mann.
So… Michael Mann teaming up with Johnny Depp? Empire loves even more!
The insanely talented duo – visionary director and versatile actor – will possibly be getting their Marvel Team-up on to make a movie about the crime wave that hit America during the Depression era of the 1930s. That’s if a meeting between the two, scheduled for this week, goes well. We imagine it will…
Mann: So, Johnny, I’m incredibly talented. Do you want to make a movie with me?
Depp: Yes, I do, Michael. I’m incredibly talented too.
Mann: Then it’s a deal?
Depp: It’s a deal.
[Pause]
Depp: Do you want to watch Nightmare On Elm Street?
Mann: Only if we can watch The Keep afterwards.
Depp: (beat) You're my bestest friend in the whole wide world.
Tim Burton: Hey! Gerroffim! He’s mine!
Sorry readers, got carried away there. Anyway, the Depp-Mann meeting will be to discuss Brian Burroughs’ non-fiction book, Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34, which Mann has long been interested in making at Universal. (Note to Mann, if he’s reading: we loved The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, but really, that title has to change…)
Depp is reportedly eyeing the role of John Dillinger, the notorious bank robber, who has previously been played on the big screen by the likes of Warren Oates. Although with such a wide array of lawmen and criminals to choose from in that big book of Burroughs’, we’d be surprised if Depp was the last A-lister to be linked with this project.
Mann and crime movies go together like the England cricket team and a top order batting collapse (topical and long-winded!), and the addition of Depp into the mix is even more mouth-watering. The collaboration came about as a result of the writers’ strike, which has temporarily nixed Depp’s Shantaram. With a window in his schedule, he was looking around for a project and this appears to fit the bill.
For Mann’s part, he had a gap in his schedule, and had been circling spy thriller, Edwin A. Salt, to which Tom Cruise had been tentatively attached. But the script for what we’re calling Public Enemies, for the time being, seems to be in a battle-ready state.
Kevin Misher, Jane Rosenthal and some guy named Robert De Niro will produce. If all goes well, shooting will begin in March in Mann’s hometown of Chicago.