Johnny Depp wants Brad Pitt or George Clooney for The Lone Ranger

From
Filmonic

A few weeks ago Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski officially signed on to direct The Lone Ranger for Disney, with Johnny Depp set to play the characters Native American companion Tonto. There has been no word so far on who will play the title character, but Depp recently revealed a few of his choices, and you may be familiar with them.

From ET:

“There’s so many interesting possibilities out there,” he tells ET. “Brad [Pitt] would be great. [George] Clooney would be great. Don’t know who it’s going to be just yet.”

Johnny, whose maternal grandfather is Cherokee, wants to portray Native American Indians in a different light than traditional Hollywood films. “Native Americans in cinema, over the past however many decades, have been treated somewhat shabbily,” he says to put it mildly. “This one has plans to rectify that.”

I doubt Disney would have a problem with either, considering how much $$$ they stand to make from such a pairing (the majority of which would be from the females, no doubt).

No word on a start date yet, although Depp will be re-teaming with his other director friend Tim Burton next April for Dark Shadows, so it won’t start until the actor his finished work on that.

Here’s the synopsis for the old draft written by Pirates scribes Ted Elliott’s and Terry Rossio’s draft, although new writer Justin Haythe may have re-written it or just started anew:

The Texas Rangers chase down a gang of outlaws led by Butch Cavendish, but the gang ambushes the Rangers, seemingly killing them all. One survivor is found, however, by an American Indian named Tonto, who nurses him back to health. The Ranger, donning a mask and riding a white stallion named Silver, teams up with Tonto to bring the unscrupulous gang and others of that ilk to justice

From Dance with shadows

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Posted on September 26, 2008

More news on The Lone Ranger movie front. How would you like a generous serving of George Clooney with a side-dish of Johnny Depp?

If electric dreams is to be believed, The Lone Ranger will be played by George Clooney. And Johnny Depp will play his faithful native american side-kick Tonto, as we all know after the Disney announcement on September 24, 2008.

Apparently, George Clooney has been very interested in the role of the lone ranger and is said to be in talks with the studio.

The Lone Ranger movie will be produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and co-written by the Pirates of the Caribbean writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. The Lone Ranger movie will be directed by Gore Verbinski.

The Lone Ranger movie will be released in 2012.

For the uninitiated, according to the Lone Ranger legend, The Lone Ranger is a masked, vigilante character created by George W. Trendle for a radio and TV series. The Lone Ranger, is a texas ranger, who is a survivor of an ambush by a gang of outlaws, where five of his other partners in a quest for justice are killed.

Severly wounded, the Lone Ranger is rescued by his childhood friend, a native american named Tonto. Legend says that the Lone Ranger considered dead by the outlaws, chooses six silver bullets and a white stallion, whom he named silver, and set off on the course of justice, with Tonto, by his side.

As per the lone ranger legend, The Lone Ranger is always masked and no one ever knows his identity.

The Lone Ranger radio series and later the TV series, starring Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger and Jay Silverheels as Tonto, were extremely popular. The Lone Ranger was the first Western ever to be so successful on TV.

If you are a George Clooney fan, you may love to see him say Hi-Ho, Silver, away! as he fades into the sunset, but I for one will be sorry to see those crinkly eyes hidden by an eye mask.