Representing the career apex he's spent years building to, Johnny Depp has signed on to produce and potentially star in Warner Bros.' Mortimer Wintergreen, the whimsical tale of a man whose life is changed by a magical hat. The project is based on the 1987 young-adult novel The Magic Hat Of Mortimer Wintergreen—and the fact that Depp exclaimed, "Sold!" with a vaudevillian flourish three words into the pitch—and it tells the tale of an 1890s-era stage magician whose magic hat has "a mind of its own," as though transcribed from Depp's very daydreams. Skins writer Jack Thorne and Nanny McPhee Returns director Susanna White are developing the story as a family film, possibly centered on a con man whose magic hat aids him in assuming his various identities. Depp may star in this loosely autobiographical tale depending on script approval, scheduling, and how his other hats take the news.
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