Johnny Depp Sorcery Tale Has a Writer

A double dose of Depp this morning for you. Following news that Pirates 5 has taken on a screenwriter to hasten its voyage to the big screen, another Johnny Depp project, Mortimer Wintergreen, has also hired a writer. This one has gone British with Skins and This Is England '86 (and '88) co-writer Jack Thorne scoring the gig for Depp's Infinitum Nihil marque.

Thorne will be magicking Myron Levoy's young adult novel, The Magic Hat Of Mortimer Wintergreen, into a script that may even star Depp himself, depending on timings and screenplay approval. We assume he'll be playing Wintergreen rather than the hat.

As The Hollywood Reporter{ =nofollow}notes, Warner Bros. has already had a crack at adapting the novel. Their draft had a conman trying to keep the supercharged chapeau from falling into the hands of some nefarious types.

Returning the source novel, Thorne will be working from raw materials - two siblings, an aunt of Roald Dahl-esque meanness, a mysterious sorcerer and a hat with magical properties - that should cleave closer to his BBC spookfest The Fades than the work he did on those award-winning Channel 4 dramas.

It's not Thorne's first foray into movies. His adaptation of Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down arrives later this year with Rosamund Pike, Aaron Paul and Toni Collette in tow, and he also has a credit on Kevin Macdonald's How I Live Now.