Johnny Depp has signed on to join Mark Rylance and Robert Pattinson in the indie movie Waiting for the Barbarians. That’s the next project from Ciro Guerra, the Colombian filmmaker behind the black-and-white gem Embrace of the Serpent.
The film is based on the allegorical novel by J.M. Coetzee and follows a British magistrate (Rylance) in a small colonial town who begins to question his loyalty to the Empire as he attempts to ignore an inevitable war with the so-called “barbarians.” No word on who Depp (or Pattinson) is playing, but this is an intriguing project for the actor, who has shied away from this kind of serious drama of late, sticking to commercial fare like Fantastic Beasts, Murder on the Orient Express and a pair of Disney franchises (Pirates of the Caribbean, Alice in Wonderland) instead.
The project will be the first under Depp’s new partnership with Andrea Iervolino, who will produce Barbarians via his new blockchain platform TaTaTu. Iervolino and Monika Bacardi‘s AMBI Media Group will also produce alongside Michael Fitzgerald and Olga Segura. Production will begin later this month in Morocco.