Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Director Kathryn Bigelow is courting Johnny Depp to star with Tom Hanks in Triple Frontier, the drama that she will direct in February for Paramount Pictures. The picture (also known as Sleeping Dogs) set in the organized crime haven that exists in the border zone between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, has five main roles, but I’m told there are two major leads in the drama scripted by Mark Boal, Bigelow’s accomplice on the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker. Depp likes the role – and the idea of teaming with Hanks — but his participation is subject to working out scheduling issues. Depp is preparing to start work also in February as Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows for Warner Bros and director Tim Burton, who has a script he likes from Seth Grahame-Smith, whose book Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter just got set up at Fox (with Burton producing). Depp’s production company is producing Dark Shadows with Graham King, so this pic is a priority. But Triple Frontier is shaping up to be a hot-button prestige project and everyone will try over the next two weeks to make it possible for him to do both. Boal and Bigelow are producing with Atlas Entertainment’s Charles Roven. Depp is repped by UTA’s Tracey Jacobs.