UPDATE: Johnny Depp As Frank Sinatra?

EXCLUSIVE: He was an enigmatic legend, and it looks as if the picture that just came together will do that justice. I’ve just learned that Universal has acquired this project based on the life of Frank Sinatra from Mandalay Pictures. Phil Alden Robinson is writing the screenplay, and Marty Scorsese will direct as well as produce through his Sikelia Productions. The Sinatra family gave its permission, which is not easy to get, and youngest daughter Tina Sinatra will be an executive producer along with Robinson and Garry LeMel, the former president of Warner Bros music division and himself a musician. The producers will be Peter Guber and his movie exec Cathy Schulman. “This has been a passion project for Peter Guber for a long time, and first he got together with the Sinatra Estate, and then with Scorsese who’s also a huge Sinatra fan,” an insider tells me. That Scorsese might direct this film has been rumored for a year. In fact, Tina herself has told journalists in the past that she would “trust Scorsese implicitly” to “present the truth” about her father because he’s also an Italian-American. No names of actors who might play Sinatra in the movie are circulating yet. Any suggestions?

Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.