Dear Johnny Depp,
Has it really come to this?
An article in Tuesday's Hollywood Reporter talked about the fact that, while you've got Public Enemies in theaters and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland in the can (along with The Rum Diaries and The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus), none of your other prospective projects was coming together.
Then it started listing them -- and the first title on the list was a remake of The Incredible Mr. Limpet, a 1964 movie in which Don Knotts played a man who was transformed into a talking fish.
And a new Lone Ranger film -- in which you would play Tonto. And a remake of the vampire soap opera Dark Shadows. And Pirates of the Caribbean 4.
I recognize that Hollywood ran out of original ideas years ago -- and that it's suffering some sort of massive brain bleed this summer with Transformers 2 and Land of the Lost.
But I always assumed that you, Johnny Depp, had a little more integrity -- and taste -- than this.
OK, Pirates 4 makes a certain financial sense, even though the series ran out of steam after the first one. An eight-figure paycheck -- and infinite residuals -- are hard to pass up.
But The Incredible Mr. Limpet? This was a movie that stank on ice when it was fresh.
Is this what you now aspire to? Remaking the Don Knotts oeuvre? What's next: teaming up with, oh, I don't know, Nicolas Cage to remake The Apple Dumpling Gang?
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