Credit: The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that both Johnny Depp and Michael Mann will sit down this week to discuss teaming up for a film about the Depression-era crime wave.
Mann has long been interested in mounting a screen adaptation of Brian Burrough’s nonfiction book “Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34” for Universal.
Because of the writer’s strike, and Mann believing that his latest project (Edwin A. Salt) is in flux because of possible rewrites, he has a free slot to do another picture.
Depp, meanwhile, was to have starred in Warner/Initial Entertainment’s Shantaram followed by Warner Independent’s The Rum Diaries; both of those projects were postponed last month.
The trade publication is reporting that the role Depp is eyeing the most is that of bank robber John Dillinger.
Along with Mann, Kevin Misher is on board as producer; Robert De Niro and his partner Jane Rosenthal, who originally optioned the book, have been involved as executive producers; and the studio is looking at a March start in Chicago if all the elements come together.
