Given how high he’s riding with the Pirates sequel, our guess is Johnny Depp could get any old idea he jots down on a post-it note greenlit with a blockbuster production budget attached in seconds. Fortunately for all of us, he's being a little more careful than that.
While part of us is wishing he’d use that power to resurrect Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, we can’t help but applaud as he reaffirms his indie credentials by seeking out Bad Santa’s Terry Zwigoff for an adaptation of French Novel Happy Days.
It’s an entirely Fonz-free tale of a Thirtysomething bloke who decides to ditch his cosy family life and check into a rest home for the elderly. There he meets an old terminal cancer patient, strikes up a close bond and spirits her away for a special journey to fulfil her final wish.
"Johnny Depp asked me to do the film," Zwigoff blabbed to Variety. "He said he chose me because I'm very Hal Ashby-like. I took that as a compliment. It's a very quaint, fantastical story." Jerry Stahl, best known for Permanent Midnight, will co-write the script.