He was an unknown commodity until Jack Sparrow took him to new heights."Īnd, as if his career weren't worrisome enough,, Depp's love life unraveled last summer, too. "Before Pirates, he had one film, Sleepy Hollow, that had made over $100 million.
"Most actors couldn't sustain having that many misfires, (but) Johnny Depp is a rare talent," Bock says. (Save for The Tourist's much-mocked 2011 Golden Globe nominations for best comedy/musical and acting nods for Depp and co-star Angelina Jolie.) Last summer's Dark Shadows, also a Burton collaboration, fizzled, and before that, The Rum Diary, The Tourist and Public Enemies all came and went without much notice. Yet he is a bona fide star now, and the failure of The Lone Ranger has cast a deep shadow over the actor, whose last non- Pirates hit was 2010's Alice in Wonderland (directed by Burton). It's almost like he doesn't want to be a star," Bock says. "The strange thing about his career is, from the get-go, he's picked strange roles. (Since 2005, the pair have collaborated on five films with mixed success.) He followed the success of that box-office home run with three more progressively diluted Pirates sequels and a slew of collaborations with his longtime friend, director Tim Burton.
Back then, Depp was a leading-man-in-the-making hunk with a knack for playing eccentric characters in mostly under-the-radar movies such as Edward Scissorhands, Blow and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.īut when Pirates became a global smash in 2003, Depp's profile rose, and he found himself firmly entrenched on the A-list. This latest cinematic failure is another entry on Depp's now-spotty résumé, which had gotten a golden boost a decade ago with the phenomenal success of the launch of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. It's tired, it's lazy filmmaking, and he plays his oddball role well, but it's not enough to make up for everything else about it that is been-there-done-that," Bock says. Ranger, with a $225 million price tag and Depp's name attached, was expected to be a summer blockbuster yet pulled in a paltry $49 million over the July Fourth holiday weekend, making it one of the biggest flops of the year so far. The public has seen him play a quirky, madcap character so many times."Ĭritics' distaste for Ranger repeatedly noted that Depp's Tonto was not far off from his twitchy, affected Jack Sparrow performance. He actually needs to play an ordinary guy. He played quirky Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, and then he was the quirky Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland,and he was quirky Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. "I do think there may be some audience fatigue in the type of character Johnny Depp plays. The very thing that made him may become his undoing, though, says Brian Balthazar, editor of POPgoesTheWeek, a pop-culture blog. He's probably offered just about every role out there still because his name does carry weight, but he chooses to go that road-less-traveled path." "Everybody knows that if you just look at his box-office record.
"Outside of Jack Sparrow (from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise), he's not a huge box-office draw," says Jeff Bock, senior box-office analyst at Exhibitor Relations. So big, in fact, that The Hollywood Reporter estimates that it's set to lose $150 million for Disney, the studio behind the critically maligned film, which took a beating against record-setting animated flick Despicable Me 2. The 50-year-old actor's most recent disappointment is The Lone Ranger, which bombed big at the box office last weekend. And, on the personal side, he just went public with much-younger girlfriend Amber Heard after a buzzed-about breakup with his long-term partner, French actress Vanessa Paradis. In the past year, he's seen two highly anticipated films under-perform at the box office.
Johnny Depp has gotten plenty of practice in the art of rising from the ashes.
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