Tim Burton spoke to Reuters about the possibility of working with Johnny Depp again. Burton is doing press for his “Wednesday” Netflix series. When it comes to Depp, Burton says he’d gladly partner up with actor "If the right thing was around."
Maybe Depp and Burton’s shared disdain for Disney will bring them together again to make a fresh new original film. That’s the hope. The Burton/Depp partnership has given us great movies over the years, including “Edward Scissorhands,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Sleepy Hollow,” and, their magnum opus, “Ed Wood.”
It seems harder and harder for a director to find himself an acting muse in today’s moviemaking landscape. Gone are the legendary collaborations that used to fire up the cinematic senses. I’m thinking Scorsese/De Niro, Wilder/Lemmon, Hitchcock/Stewart, Fellini/Mastroianni, Kazan/Brando, Brooks/Wilder, Kurosawa/Mifune, Ford/Wayne, Bergman/Ullmann, Herzog/Kinski, Leaud/Truffaut, Dietrich/Von Sternberg.
What modern-day actor/director partnership could one day be deemed worthy of the above mentioned? Maybe I missed some, but here are the few modern-day collabs that I did find, most of which have the potential to be spoken of as all-timers in the years and decades to come:
Martin Scorsese/Leonardo Dicaprio
Wes Anderson/Bill Murray
Paul Thomas Anderson/Phillip Seymour Hoffman
Joel and Ethan Coen /John Goodman
Michael Haneke/Isabelle Huppert
Richard Linklater/Ethan Hawke
Quentin Tarantino/ Samuel L. Jackson
Lars Von Trier/Stellan Skarsgard
Tim Burton/Johnny Depp
Mike Leigh/Timothy Spall
Pedro Almodovar/Penelope Cruz
Still no distributor for "Bucking Fastard," "Alpha Gang," "The Last Photograph," "Closing Night," and "The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd." The issue seems to be quality more than a lack of willingness to buy.