It seems like the rumors may have been confirmed: Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell will each fill in for Heath Ledger in Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Cinematical reports via Ain’t It Cool News, the insidery movie and comics blog that broke the scoop early this morning. The film was still in production when Mr. Ledger died on Jan. 22 of what has been ruled an accidental overdose of prescription drugs, leaving questions as to how filming would be completed.  read more »

This weekend, across the country, discerning film-going audiences were able to choose between two types of history: the real kind and the fake. Guess which one won?! National Treasure: Book of Secrets (no. 3), which follows the Indiana Jones-like Ben Gates as he tries to clear his family’s name in connection to the Lincoln assassination, raked in over $45 million and easily earned the top spot in the country. But here in the city, it lost out to Mike Nichols’ Charlie Wilson’s War (no. 2), about an obscure congressman and his even more obscure fight to help the Afghans defeat the Soviets during the Cold War, which outearned the Nicholas Cage actioner by $5,000, while playing on one less screen. Cue Cindy Adams: Only in New York, kids!  read more »

Johnny Depp will likely never drive around L.A. bumping into people and things in a convertible Mercedes. Instead, the Sweeny Todd star, 44, looks forward to the time when he can achieve some semblance of anonymity. In Esquire’s January issue, on newsstands Friday, the actor imagines what that freedom will be like, saying, “I'm sure it will be a possibility someday again. Maybe when I get old. They get tired of you,” he told the highbrow lad mag. “‘Didn't you used to be Johnny Depp?' That will be the clincher." Apparently, he leaned the value of privacy from his friend and mentor, the late Marlon Brando, recalling how the screen legend told him: ‘“That's your world and it's nobody else's business. It's not anybody's entertainment.”’ (He does, in the end, throw the paparazzi a bone by revealing that he likes to enter restaurants and hotels through the back door.)

"It'll definitely make you a little weird if you're constantly being stared at," Mr. Depp went on. "I don't want to be a product. Of course you want the movies to do well. But I don't want to know ... who's hot now and who's not and who's making this much dough and who's boffing this woman or that one. I want to remain ignorant of all this. I want to be totally outside and far away from all of it." [AP via HuffPo]

Broadway World's online TV show Broadway Beat is making a three-part series of interviews and historical retrospectives, counting down to the opening of Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street on Dec. 21. If you can get past BWW.com's Richard Ridge performing a nerdy introduction (and dressed so appropriately in fake-blood-red and black!), the first episode is almost entertaining.  read more »

On Monday, Dec. 3, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street premiered at the Ziegfeld Theater. The film, which opens on Dec. 21, is a gloriously dark marriage of Tim Burton imagery and Stephen Sondheim music that those in the know are declaring to be the film of the year. Star Johnny Depp was there, distinguished-looking in glasses, a smart suit and bright red tie, as well as Mr. Burton and Mr. Sondheim, co-stars Alan Rickman and Sacha Baron Cohen, and even—hey now!—Keith Richards.  read more »

Johnny Depp will be tossing the barber's knives and whimsical song and dance from Sweeney Todd for a more gangster getup for his next project with Michael Mann: Public Enemies, according to Variety. They met just hours after the Todd premiere to make the deal. Syonara Burton!  read more »

It’s been almost six years since Johnny Depp’s last London slasher flick, From Hell, so it’s understandable that his latest project, Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, left the bohemian-chic thespian a little harried by the whole experience. In Mr. Depp’s first reunion with longtime collaborator Tim Burton since 2005’s Corpse Bride, the 44-year-old actor will co-star alongside Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen. Very nice!

“Having worked with sharp objects before [in Edward Scissorhands], everything was fine until I had to shave someone,” Mr. Depp told Scotland's Daily Record. “The shaving cream made me really nervous. It was the most uncomfortable moment of my life [shaving Mr. Rickman]. Poor Alan. I've never really experienced that full on thing. This is a full beard for me - this is a lumberjack thing for me. But I can definitely appreciate it because when you get into the chair with a stranger and they lather your face up with sharp instruments around your throat...it's frightening."

And while Mr. Depp is no stranger to a little music making—he has worked with Oasis and Tom Petty in the past—he said he was spooked to the max by the prospect of crooning for the camera. “I think I was probably more frightened than anyone. I've never tried karaoke. It scares the hell out of me. I've never been that drunk—and I've been drunk,” he told the paper at a recent press junket. "Tim said he didn't know if I could sing and, likewise, I didn't know if I could sing. I did these demos in my friend's garage studio because I didn't know if I'd be able to hit a note, to be honest, I really didn't. I did that and sent it to Tim and he said we're going to be okay. And then I became a bit more confident," added the seemingly unflappable star.

All funny on-set anecdotes aside, Mr. Depp still knows the importance of actually publicizing his projects at press junkets. Whetting the appetites of critics and fans starving for a little more Johnny, he settled in and got right down to business, saying, “Someone is probably weeping after watching my performance."

To see pictures of the actor from the Sweeny Todd press junket, click here.

Johnny Depp planned to spend the winter in India, playing an Australian heroin addict who escapes a maximum-security prison, reinvents himself as a doctor in the slums of India and eventually uses gun-running and counterfeiting skills to fight against the invading Russian troops in Afghanistan. But the Writers Guild of America's strike has postponed shooting because the script isn't ready, according to Variety.  read more »