Johnny Depp About To Play the Role of a Lifetime: Satan

It’s been nearly seven years since Johnny Depp donned his pirate costume as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017). Since then, it’s been a bumpy road for Depp, and that’s an understatement.

Depp had his well-publicized defamation trial with his ex-wife, Amber Heard, which essentially ruined their careers. Depp was replaced as Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts series and has reportedly been replaced in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, despite his desire to return to the series eventually. 

It’s also been a struggle for Depp to find work lately. He only put out one movie this year, Jeanne du Barry (2023), which only had a limited release in America. He also spent most of the year touring with his band, LA Vampires.

But now, director Terry Gilliam believes he has the film to get Depp back on top. Gilliam is best known as the director of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). But Depp and Gilliam have a history. The two worked together on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), the semi-autobiographical film about Hunter S. Thompson’s time in the Nevada desert.

But Gilliam’s character may not necessarily be the type that will endear him to a wider audience. Gilliam would like Depp to play Satan. That’s right, for his comeback role, Gilliam wants Depp to play the devil.

It may not sound like the ideal role for Depp, but this could be the exact type of character that gets him back on top. The film Carnival at the End of Days will be co-written by Christopher Brett Bailey, who wrote the screenplay and music and starred in his only movie, Dream Agency (2022).

Gilliam described the movie and Depp’s role to Variety as:

This is a simple tale of God wiping out humanity for f*****g up his beautiful garden Earth. There’s only one character who’s trying to save humanity and that’s Satan, because without humanity he’s lost his job and he’s an eternal character and so to live without a job is terrible. So he finds some young people and he tries to convince God that these young people are the new Adam and Eve. God still gets to wipe out humanity. It’s a comedy. God wipes out humanity and the only character who wants to save them is Satan, and Johnny Depp plays Satan.

While it does sound a bit off-beat, this is the kind of role that Depp would excel at. Think of it as Edward Scissorhands meets Whitey Bulger. And with Gilliam at the helm, it would work.

Before he described the movie, Gilliam reminded Variety that they were the magazine that killed him. In 2015, the magazine accidentally published his obituary, even though he clearly was not dead yet.

Gilliam and Depp have also acted together in the same film, sort of. The pair appeared in Lost in La Mancha (2012). It is a documentary about Gilliam’s attempt to get his movie, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018), off the ground. But Gilliam likes to remind Depp that his name appears first above the title. “I have to keep him in his place,” he said to Variety.

Perhaps this Terry Gilliam movie might be just what Johnny Depp needs for his career. It may even get him back to playing Captain Jack Sparrow in a new Pirates of the Caribbean film. It could be beneficial to both him and Disney. But that remains to be seen.

We will continue to update this story at Disney Fanatic.