JOHNNY-DEPP.org

Released in the UK on 29th July Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is the second adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic. In the brand new version the film star Johnny Depp is sure to make Dahl collectables hot property this year.

Merchandise for the Elm is stacked up in stores ranging from lunch boxes for kids to golden ticket cufflinks for adults. Hang on to your packaging,  stash away those mint books and hide away those promotional posters because Charlie and the Chocolate Factory collectables should rocket.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was first published in 1964 in the US and followed on in the UK in 1967. The book was a huge success and has since been published in 32 languages selling 13.7 million copies. Today everyone knows the story of Charlie Bucket who eats cabbage soup because his family are so poor. One day he is lucky enough to find a golden ticket to visit the famous Wonka factory. Four naughty children, hundreds of Oompa Loompas and the eccentric Willy Wonka all add to the tale those generations of children have adored. Roald Dahl found C Charlie and the Chocolate Factory one of the most difficult books to write and originally had 15 children in the book. He showed his first draft to his nephew, Nicholas, who after reading it through, told his Uncle that it was rotten and boring! Dahl went back to the drawing board and after condensing the characters down to just five children created the story that we all love today.

read full article

Title: I Felt like an outsider, Now I feel like I can do anything

Author: Martyn Palmer

Publication: Empire

Issue: August 2005

 In the Shadow Of two bright-red trucks emblazoned with an ornate “W” and across a courtyard packed hard with (fake) snow, the scarecrow figure that is Johnny Depp, as outlandish factory owner Willy Wonka, adjusts his black tunic before leaning in to have a few quiet words in Tim Burton’s ear. Burton stands away from his camera and has a little chuckle at whatever Johnny’s smiling about. They look happy. They look like two (big) little boys having a good time together kids in a sweet shop, you might say. Or. to be more precise, kids in a chocolate factory.

As if you didn’t know, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory reunites Team Burton and Depp, a kind of modern-day Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, with more quirk and fewer swords. Stand by for collaboration No. 4 (following Edward Scissorhands. Ed Wood and Sleepy Hollow) and expect to enter a world originally created by Roald Dahl but perfectly designed for Burton’s particular, weirdly appealing sensibility and Depp’s beguilingly child-like demeanour.

“It’s fun and it’s meant to be fun.” Depp says later. “Tim is doing beautiful stuff: the sets are incredible and the work has been a ball. And for me. going back into the ring with Tim is like being home. Yeah, right at home,

read full article

Title: King John

Author: Andrew Collins

Publication: RadioTimes

Issue: 23-29 July 2005

 I wish I’d been the one to spot it, but the honour goes to the creature behind ads for a satellite movie channel s few years ago. They montaged clips of Johnny Depp, but treated them to resemble 1920’s film stock:  black and white and scratchy. Each showed a wordless facial reaction with piano accompaniment. The thesis:  Depp is the great silent star who never was.

That’s Depp in a nutshell. He’s thoroughly modern – trendy, offbeat, rock’n’roll  – and yet there’s something deeply old-fashioned about him.  He’s a modern classic, combining iconoclasm with a crowd-pleasing populism that’s finally made him bankable as well as cool, thanks to Pirates of the Caribbean.

After achieving cheesy fame in the late 1980s in TV cop show 21 Jump Street, Depp found a more artistic kind under the guidance of director Tim Burton. His fourth collaboration with Burton – they’re a toy-box Scorsese and De Niro – is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It threatens, after Finding Neverland, to make him a Dick Van Dyke with attitude.

So what’s his secret? Dashing good looks aren’t enough (although fans of Chocolate may disagree); nor are the column inches accrued during his wild years smashing up hotel suites and dating Kate Moss. It might be his eternal youthfulness, even in his early 40s, or simply a knack for looking like he’s having a fantastic time.

read full article

 Title: I’m Just

Author: Kate Jackson

Publication: UK Daily Star

Issue: July 2005

JOHNNY DEPP is so worried children won’t like Wonka.

JOHNNY Depp won’t be the only one going completely Wonkas over his new role. The super cool star has become Willy Wonka, the chocolate-loving hero of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; and there’s already talk of an Oscar.

But sexy Johnny 41, isn’t bothered about an Academy Award – he’s more worried about what his kids will think of the movie when it opens this month.

“What I did with Wonka was test it on my daughter; Lily-Rose Melody; to see if I was going in the right direction” says the father of two. “Many times we`ve played Barbies where she has said ‘Daddy; don’t use that voice. Just talk regular.’

“But one day I started to do the Wonka voice. She lit up and gave me this ‘Where’s that coming from?’  kind of look.

“I thought ‘Ok, I think I am on the right track here’.”

But if Lily-Rose, six, and her brother  Jack three,  think daddy will be as generous with hls treats as Wonka, they’ve got another think coming.

While Johnny admits his children are the apples of his eye, he’s determined they won’t grow up to be like Roald Dahl’s bratty character Veruca Salt played in the movie by 12 year old Julia Winter.

read full article

Title: hot Chocolate
Author: Adam Stone
Publication: UK Fabric
Issue: July 2005

 The Peter Pan of Hollywood tells Adam Stone about his wild past, his family and his new found happiness

Johnny Depp and chocolate – two of the finer things in life and a recipe for sweet success if ever there was one. It’s just this combination that Tim Burton was banking on when he signed up his favourite leading man for his remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

But if you know Johnny Depp as an actor and Tim Burton as a filmmaker, you’ll know this won’t be a sugary tale from the sweet shop counter. This is dark chocolate – very dark – and it’s just how Johnny likes it. The film is based on Roald Dahl`s classic novel about a boy named Charlie Bucket who, thanks to a lucky ticket in a candy bar, becomes one of five children allowed a tour of the amazing chocolate factory run by the eccentric Willy Wonka and his staff of Oompa-Loompas.

Comedy actor Gene Wilder brought Wonka to the big screen in 1971 but his portrayal and the film as a whole infuriated Dahl, who refused the studio sequel rights.

Johnny believes his Wonka would please the legendary writer — if only he had lived to see it. “Regardless of what one thinks of the 1971 film, Gene Wilder’s persona stands out”,

read full article

Title: I love playing with Barbie dolls

Author: Eveyln Moore/Corrine Barraclough

Publication: UK 3AM Mirror

Issue: June 2005

He’s one of the sexiest stars in Hollywood but Johnny Depp couldn’t be less bothered about his A-List Hollywood heart-throb status.  The 41-year-old hunk prefers the simple life with his family in France to the glitz and glamour of Tinseltown. But don‘t worry you haven’t seen the last of those smouldering came-to-bed eyes, girls. Johnny’s back in two films this month. Starring along side him in The Libertine is Brit talent Smantha Morton and funny man Johnny Vegas, in which Johnny D plays the lead as a drunken 17^th century poet.  Dreamy Depp also shares a screen with Kate Winslet in Finding Neverland, the story of J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan. And if that isn’t enough to keep Depp fans happy,  you can also start fantasying about his return as Jack Sparrow in the sequel to box office smash Pirates of the Caribbean.

You‘ve always been labelled as a bit of a rebel in Hollywood — Is that true?

Well I’ve never though of myself that way! I never got that whole rebel thing, you know, the rebellious image.  It was something they slapped on me just to have a name for the product I think.

Maybe it’s also because you’re no pushover?

read full article

Title: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Publication: UK Movie Magic

Issue: May 2005

There are movies that remain timeless family favourites, rebroadcast on holidays for new generations to enjoy. Movies like me The Wizard of Oz, The Sound of Music, and Miracle on 34^th Street fit that mould. Other films are remembered and revered from one era to the next for being unique and irreverent, not because they were mainstream blockbuster releases. These are known as cult classics. Campy movies like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, sci-fi flicks like Blade Runner and low budget horror movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers fall into this category. There may only be one movie ever made that fits into both categories. The 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is at once cult classic and family favourite.

After over 30 years, the movie has remained popular as ever, being rebroadcast on network television and cable over and over. School plays and Halloween costumes are still inspired by film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The long awaited remake of the original comes to theatres July 15^th 2005, and millions of children and adults will he lining up on-line to buy tickets all for very different reasons.

One reason Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is among the most highly anticipated films of summer is because Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are attached to what promises to be a wild ride of a movie.

read full article

Title: Johnny Depp: How He Found His Own Private Neverland

Author: Erik Hedegaard

Publication: Rolling Stones

Issue: December 30, 2004 – January 13, 2005

In “finding neverland” Johnny Depp plays Peter Pan author, J.M. Barrie with muted, understated ease, and in so doing he may well wind up with his second Oscar nomination. It’s been quite some year for Depp, 41, both good and not so good. His friend Marlon Brando died in July. But then came Never-land. He recently finished filming Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for his friend and frequent director Tim Burton. He’s soon to start shooting the sequel, maybe two, to his biggest hit ever, Pirates of the Caribbean. He recently plunked down $3.6 million for a deserted island in the Bahamas.

What was the best present you got this year?

Probably this gig. playing Willy Wonka.

Favorite movie this year?

Yeah, it’s an old one [1944] called The Mask of Demitrios with Peter Loire and Sydney Greenstreet. I watched it about five times in a row. Brilliant. I don’t see new movies that much. If I do see a new movie, it’s a kids movie. The Incredibles was really, really great. My son. Jack, now runs around with his little Mr. Incredible doll. The beauty is, Jack calls Mr. Incredible “Mr. Credible.” which really killed me. Mr. Credible.

read full article

Title: Cooler Than You

Author: Stephen Dalton

Publication: UnCut

Issue: December 2004

FOR A WHILE back there, we almost lost Johnny Depp. Torn between success and excess, art and commerce, Hollywood’s Lost Boy could easily have coasted into a perpetual twilight of self-loathing like his friend and idol Marlon Brando. More likely still was a slow drift into art house exile in France. There were even moments when the darkness of River Phoenix or Kurt Cobain could have consumed him.

And yet, in 2004, Depp isn’t just back, he’s back on top. After countless flops punctuated by a couple of hits, the uncompromising 41 -year-old is currently basking in the glory of a sustained run of box-office smashes – first his Oscar-nominated turn as buccaneer Jack Sparrow in the theme-park swashbuckler Pirates Of The Caribbean then running away with Robert Rodriguez’s splatterpunk “taco western” Once Upon A Time In Mexico, and now his sensitive portrayal of Peter Pan creator JM Barrie in Finding Neverland, from Monsters Ball director Marc Forster. After years playing emotionally scarred fuck-ups, drug addicts, freaks and outcasts, the Lost Boy has come in from the cold.

GLIDING THROUGH the ballroom of Venice’s Des Bains hotel to meet Uncut, Depp radiates the serenity of a man with nothing left to prove. In his dreamy, faraway voice, he talks about Barrie.

“It’s important to keep in contact with those qualities we had as children,”

read full article

Title: Johnny’s Depth

Publication: People Magazine

Issue: November 2004

Johnny Depp was having his very own take-your-daughter-to-work day. For months he had been commuting from the set of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory near London to see his fami­ly—Lily-Rose, 5, Jack, 2, and their mom, his longtime companion, Vanessa Paradis, 31—at their retreat on the French Riviera. Every weekend was the same, says producer Richard Zanuck: On Friday after work Depp took a two-hour flight to Nice followed by a two-hour drive to the family house in a tiny French village, then headed back to London again every Sunday night. The trip never wore him out. “Monday morning he’d be all smiles and say, ‘I just had the greatest time with my family’” says Zanuck. “It seemed to refresh him.” But he brought the family to England for the last month of shooting. And nothing could quite compare to the charge he got bringing Lily-Rose to the set on Nov. 9. As Zanuck explains, “He wanted her to see him playing with the Oompa Loompas.”

Talk about perks. Less than a year after Hollywood’s sweetly scruffy outsider was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for the $654 million-grossing Pirates of the Ca­ribbean, Depp, 41, is once again riding high on a wave of good fortune. There’s Oscar buzz about his role as Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie in Finding Neverland. And there’s Depp’s deep contentment with family life— a life that now includes a recently purchased private island in the Caribbean where he can watch Paradis,

read full article