Gore Verbinski: the man who directed the Pirates of the Caribbean movies to global success. Johnny Depp: a man whose name guarantees hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. And animation: a licence to print money. So Depp and Verbinski's latest animated collaboration, **Rango, must be pretty exciting. But also, on the basis of this exclusive announcement, confusing.
Now all that we know about the film to date is that it involves a household pet chameleon, presumably called Rango (Depp), with an identity crisis. By the looks of the single image release so far (see left) it could have a Western tinge. The supporting cast includes the very promising likes of Bill Nighy, Isla Fisher, Stephen Root, Abigail Breslin Harry Dean Stanton, Ray Winstone, and Timothy Olyphant as The Spirit of the West. And it doesn't appear to be based on the 1967 Western sit-com or the 1931 orangutan documentary of the same name.
But this announcement? Well, it doesn't so much shine a light on the plot as confuse it further. Check it out.
It's not just us, right? That makes no sense. It is, you might say, as useful to plot-diviners as a bicycle to a fish. Hopefully things will become clearer before the film's March 18, 2011 release date in the US and April 2011 release date here. They can, after all, hardly become less clear.