He may not be able to control what happens with **The Lone Ranger’**s budget worries, but Johnny Depp is much more firmly in charge of his plan to get a new take on The Thin Man into cinemas, hiring David Koepp to start writing a script for the film that Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides director Rob Marshall will bring to life.
Back in March, Depp engaged Permanent Midnight’s Jerry Stahlto take a crack at adapting Dashiel Hammett’s fifth and final novel, which appeared in 1934 and was almost immediately filmed with William Powell in the lead. But according to Deadline, Stahl never actually cranked anything out, so now the even more experienced Koepp is aboard instead.
Koepp will reportedly go back to the source novel, which finds retired detective Nick Charles (the role Depp will play) marrying wealthy socialite Nora and generally boozing it up with a little light crime solving sprinkled in to keep things interesting.
The writer’s job will apparently be to combine elements from the first two Thin Man films (the eponymous original and 1936’s After the Thin Man), maintaining the period setting but giving it a little Sherlock Holmes-style panache. But more surprisingly, he’ll need to leave room for Marshall to add in a couple of musical numbers, which seems like an odd proposition.
His hiring is not really a surprise, since Koepp has a history with Depp, having directed him in **Secret Window **back in 2004. And he’s also a man in great demand, thanks to scripting some of the biggest films of the last couple of decades, including Jurassic Park and the first Spider-Man. Most recently, he signed on to re-write the still-untitled Jack Ryan Reboot for Paramount and to do some work on Men in Black 3. Plus he has his latest co-writing/directing job, the Joseph Gordon-Levitt pic Premium Rush, waiting for release next February.