Johnny has signed on to play the lead role in the movie “Shantaram” based on the novel “Shantaram” with the real life story of Gregory David Roberts.
In the movie he will portray a drug addict, who escapes from a prison in Australia and becomes a (fake) doctor in the slums of Mumbay and fights in Afhanistan against Russia.
It counts as one of the biggest Hollywood Deals of the year, costars will be Helena Bonham Carter and Emily Watson
Title: The Family of Pan
Author: Mark Salisbury
Publication: Empire
Issue: October 2004
IT’S A WARM AUGUST EVENING IN 2002 TOWARD THE END of the Finding Neverland shoot, and Johnny Depp, as playwright J.M. Barrie and Dustin Hoffman, who plays his loyal theatrical producer Charles Frohman, are resplendent in their first-night finery of white tie and tails. They’ve spent the past few hours at the ornate, 19th-century Richmond Theatre in southwest London filming two scenes: one that takes place early in the movie, in which Frohman consoles Barrie after a disastrous opening night, and the other, late in the story, in which Barrie tries to reassure Frohman that tonight’s performance—the world premiere of Peter Pan—will be a sell-out. As director Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball) readies another take, Depp fires up hand-rolled cigarette and swaps jokes with Hoffman (who, having starred in Hook, is no stranger to the world of Neverland). Two of the best actors of their respective generations, they make a fine double act, united by a mutual respect. “The two of them have this great balance, how they play off one another,” says Forster. “They have the same quality, this quality of being a child.”
That’s a compliment Peter Pan himself would be the first to appreciate. Written a century ago, Barrie’s play about the boy who won’t grow up remains a seminal work of children’s literature, its characters—Peter, Wendy, Tinkerbell, Captain Hook—and defining themes as fresh and pertinent today as they were back then.