Tim Burton sees another Johnny Depp collab, but it won't be Edward Scissorhands 2

Well, someone finally cornered Tim Burton into talking about Johnny Depp. Asked at the Marrakech International Film Festival whether there’d be another Burton/Depp collaboration in the future, the filmmaker replied, “Well, I’m sure there will be” (per IndieWire). The duo have a longstanding personal and professional relationship, working together on eight films across more than two decades. Depp hasn’t worked with Burton since 2012’s Dark Shadows and hasn’t been part of a major Hollywood production since losing a UK libel case that described him as a “wife-beater” in relation to ex Amber Heard.

Though Burton and Depp’s careers remain closely associated, the director has managed to avoid commenting directly on the actor’s situation. Previously, he offered circumspect opinions on cancel culture during a 2023 conversation with The Independent, wherein the interviewer compared the mob at the end of Edward Scissorhands to public outrage against Depp or Paul Reubens. “Here’s the thing. When I was a child, I always had an image of the angry villagers in Frankenstein… I always used to think about society that way, as the angry village,” Burton said in response. “You see it more and more. It’s a very, very strange human dynamic, a human trait that I don’t quite like or understand.”

Burton offered a more concrete show of support at Marrakech by expressing his willingness to work with Depp again, but added, “I never feel like, oh, I’m going to use this and that actor. … It usually has to be based on the project I’m working on.” Burton is known for his frequent collaborations with certain artists like Depp, Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Burton’s ex Helena Bonham Carter, and more recently, Jenna Ortega. To Burton, “That’s what film is all about. It’s collaboration and bouncing ideas off the people around you.”

If Burton does find the right project to work on with Depp, it’s not going to be another Edward Scissorhands, despite the success of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. “There are certain films I don’t want to make a sequel to,” he explained at the film festival. “I didn’t want to make a sequel to [Scissorhands] because it felt like a one-off thing. I didn’t want to have a sequel for The Nightmare Before Christmas because it also felt like a one-off thing. Certain things are best left on their own and that for me is one of them.”