- The Observer, Sunday 3 February 2008
Johnny Depp
Depp will play bank robber John Dillinger in Michael Mann's Public Enemies, and, when his delayed project Shantaram finally gets off the ground, he'll play a heroin addict who becomes a doctor in Mumbai. A part in The Rum Diary, Bruce Robinson's Hunter S Thompson adaptation, will follow, and it's rumoured that Depp will appear in two Sin City sequels.
Will Smith
Smith is a busy producer these days and has only time to star in two of his projects. Peter Berg's comedy Hancock (opening 2 July) has him playing a destructive superhero seeking PR help from Jason Bateman. And he's alongside Rosario Dawson and Woody Harrelson in Seven Pounds (January 2009), another emotional tale from The Pursuit of Happyness director Gabriele Muccino.
George Clooney
Clooney is to play a CIA assassin in his third film with the Coen brothers, the black comedy Burn After Reading. Before that, he's directing and acting in Leatherheads (11 April), a romantic comedy co-starring Renée Zellweger set in the world of 1920s American football. He is also slated to direct a Coen brothers script, Suburbicon, and to add his voice to Wes Anderson's animated The Fantastic Mr Fox.
Matt Damon
Damon will appear in Kenneth Lonergan's drama, Margaret, with Anna Paquin, and he's reuniting with director Paul Greengrass for an adaptation of award-winning Iraq war exposé Imperial Life in the Emerald City. Damon is in talks to star alongside Morgan Freeman in Clint Eastwood's Mandela drama, The Human Factor, and he may also appear in a delayed Steven Soderbergh project, The Informant.
Denzel Washington
Washington has directed and produced The Great Debaters, in which he also stars as a professor at Wiley College, Texas, who, in 1935, pitted an all-black debate team against Harvard in the national championship. He will also star in Tony Scott's remake of Seventies subway thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, in the Walter Matthau role as a veteran transit cop.
