Johnny Depp is planning to be a busy boy, as Deadline reports that his production company, Infinitum Nihil, has snapped up the rights to the 70s TV show The Night Stalker, and that he’s also hoping to make a movie about Paul Revere, while ThePlaylist suggest he may be lining up In The Hands Of Dante.
As with Dark Shadows (which he’s currently shooting and if based on a 60s supernatural soap opera), Depp was fond memories of the TV movie and series The Night Stalker, about dogged journalist Carl Kolchak’s, who investigations into murders invariably led him to the door of vampires, zombies, werewolves and aliens. Johnny got Disney to buy a pitch for a film version, with Depp’s company producing and him potentially starring. As Disney is behind it, it’s likely the movie will retain a family tone, despite its potentially dark subject matter.
Also on the star’s radar is a movie about Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride, with Batman Forever scribes Lee and Janet Batchler on scripting duties. The movie will focus on the 24-hour period when the Boston silversmith rode from Charlestown to Lexington to warn the American revolutionaries that the British were coming. That film is set up at Disney too.
Finally, director Julian Schnabel (Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Before Night Falls and Basquiat) has been talking about a movie he’s planning to do with Depp, saying “Theres a great book called In the Hand of Dante by Nick Tosches. It belongs to Johnny, but Im not going to make it for a couple of years. Were gonna work on writing it, developing it. We didnt sign anything. Its just something Johnny asked me to read and I think its a great book so maybe you should read it. Its pretty beautiful. Its about everything.”
It’s not exactly a definite thing then, but it’s certainly on Johnny’s radar, whether he does it with Schnabel or not. The book tells dual story – one in 14th Century Italy, where Dante is searching for the inspiration to complete his masterwork, The Divine Comedy, while the other takes place in modern-day New York, where what may be Dante’s original manuscript surfaces, which sets of dark conspiracies and violence as people try to profit from it and also to authenticate it.
There’s no timeframe on any of these, and as Depp has plenty of other projects on the go, it’s difficult to know when he’ll get round to these (if indeed he ever does).