Originally Posted By FerretAfros Last week, I was really excited to hear about the new stuff coming out of the Studios from the D23 presentation. As of that time, there were precisely 0 films that had been greenlit under Rich Ross's time as head of the Studio. Of all the various events at D23, the Studio presentation had the potential to announce the most new information, since they're just about at the end of the material that was greenlit under Dick Cook. Given that Ross has been in his current position for almost 2 years, it's pretty surprising that we haven't really seen anything from him. So, what was announced at the presentation? It sounds like they did some neat stuff with the projects we already know about, giving more detail about them. They also announced a couple new Pixar films that we didn't already know about. And nothing else. No live-action, nothing from Feature Animation (or whatever they're calling it these days), nothing new. And from my understanding, the head of the Studio has very little input for the Pixar creative process. I'm sure Ross would have final veto power over ideas, but I don't think he would really have much imput into which concepts are proposed. So what does he do? And when will we ever see it?
Originally Posted By DlandDug Well, he did pull the plug on Johnny Depp's Lone Ranger project. So there's that...
Originally Posted By FerretAfros I guess that's something. Personally, as much as I'd love to see a redo of Lone Ranger, I'm happy to see Depp get cut from the project. I'm just a little tired of seeing him in everything. I'd also like to see him play a 'normal' person for once (like any character in a romantic comedy, rather than the Mad Hatter or Edward Scissorhands). But I'm a guy, so I guess there are things that I'll never understand about people's fascination with him. Has he actually approved anything yet? I can't think of anything specifically tied to him, but there are a couple upcoming films (like John Carter) that I don't remember hearing about before Cook left. Could have been that I just wasn't paying attention. But it seems like they're going to run out of projects to work on pretty soon, as there's a limited amount of material approved for production at this point.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros (And for clarity, the 'he' in the second paragraph is Ross. I'm pretty sure that Depp hasn't greenlit any projects at the Studio. I do know that much!)
Originally Posted By DlandDug >>I'd also like to see him [Johnny Depp] play a 'normal' person for once (like any character in a romantic comedy...)<< Dude. Really? Did you not see "The Tourist" just this year? Oh, that's right. You didn't. Nobody did. Because nobody really wants to see Johnny Depp play a normal person in a romantic thriller...
Originally Posted By CuriousConstance I'm not interested in seeing Johnny Depp smooch anybody, I get enough of that while I'm sleeping, so bring on the weirdo roles.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros Actually, I did see The Tourist, and I thought it was an interesting premise, but (spoiler alert!) he still plays a weird person. Sure, a wierdo masquerading as a normal person is closer to a normal person than most of his roles, but still a letdown at the end of the film for me. Personally, I was hoping that the person of interest was Angelina Jolie, and she had either made up the backstory that everybody was following, or he had had even more ridiculous plastic surgeries than are necessary. It was a very interesting film, and a great way to see Venice in a semi-unusual way. But it was a bit of a letdown that he couldn't just be normal.
