Kathryn Bigelow certainly isn’t wanting for choices when it comes to casting her next project, currently titled Sleeping Dogs. Just yesterday Tom Hanks began making moves towards signing on to the crime thriller and now she has Johnny Depp looking at ways to juggle his schedule so he can join up too.
Deadline – which seems insistent on calling the film **Triple Frontier **(the name is in flux, so it’ll probably be something else entirely by the time it hits our cinema marquees) – makes a note that while the movie has five primary parts, there are two solid leads, one of which Hanks is now after and the other that Depp is interested in.
The Hurt Locker’s Mark Boal has written the script for Dogs, which takes place in the organised crime-infested border sector between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, where life is tough on both sides of the law.
Here’s where the scheduling issue rears its ugly head: Depp is finishing up work on Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Bigelow is gearing up to make Dogs in February. Trouble is, Depp’s also committed to old mucker Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, which he’s not only starring in, as vampire Barnabas Collins, but also producing. Which means it would need his full attention. Still, he’s trying to find some wiggle room and the Dogs team will no doubt aim to fix the shooting schedule so that he can do both. But if he accidentally turns up in Bigelow's film with sharp fangs, blame his busy diary.