Johnny Depp wants to join film based on JM Coetzee’s novel

Actor Johnny Depp may be about to work with the acclaimed Colombian director Ciro Guerra, whose new film, Birds of Passage, is one of the hits of the on-going Cannes Film Festival.

The Pirates of the Caribbean star has “reached out” to Guerra, a hot arthouse talent who won a bunch of awards for The Embrace of the Serpent (2015), Screen magazine reports.

Depp will “possibly” star in Guerra’s next film, based on a novel by the South African Nobel laureate JM Coetzee, which already Mark Rylance and Robert Pattinson in the cast, the magazine adds.

Shooting for Guerra’s first English-language feature, based on Coetzee’s own adaptation of his 1980 novel, Waiting for the Barbarians, is set to begin this autumn in Morocco. It will tell the story of a magistrate in a colonial town who is accused of consorting with the enemies of a fictional empire, modelled on apartheid-era South Africa.

Publisher Penguin included the book in its Great Books of the 20th Century series.

Depp is set to play the magician Gellert Grindelwald in the upcoming Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. If he joins Guerra’s film, the actor will have a Potter connection in his co-star — Pattinson, who became huge with the Twilight movies, got his first proper break in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), playing the role of Cedric Diggory.

Once Hollywood’s highest paid actor, Depp has seen his stock slip in the past few years, dragged down by a messy divorce from actor Amber Heard replete with domestic abuse allegations. Angry Harry Potter fans had called for his lead role in Fantastic Beasts to be recast, but author J K Rowling and director David Yates stood by him. Heard and Depp had an out-ofcourt divorce settlement.

DEPP MAY STAR IN ARTHOUSE TALENT CIRO GUERRA’S NEXT FILM, BASED ON A NOVEL BY THE NOBEL LAUREATE JM COETZEE. IT HAS MARK RYLANCE AND ROBERT PATTINSON IN THE CAST SO FAR

Johnny Depp PHOTO: KEVORK DJANSEZIAN/REUTERS