Gore Verbinski reveales that Rango is a project that he has been working towards since 2005.
Verbinski is back in the director's chair for animation movie Rango, which sees Johnny Depp voice the central character; a chameleon with an indentity crisis.
Speaking to Collider the filmmaker said: "It really started with this concept of first just creating this Western genre based on creatures of the desert and then from there I sat down with four of my favorite illustrators and said 'Lets conjure. Let’s go. But that’s the only rule.' Snakes, tortoises, lizards, everything.
"Out of that we started to build iconography and first is just simple silhouettes of shapes. At the same time we’re working on the screenplay with John Logan and both things influenced each other.
"It was very much an open format, the process of building the narrative for art and scenes. [Writer and Storyboard Artist James Byrkit] and I did all the voices, scratch voices, and cut the whole thing on a Macintosh as an animatic.
"This is a project I’ve been banging around since 2005, working with a children’s book author named David Shannon and producer John Carls and we’ve sort of been feeling out the idea of the project for a while.
"I brought it up to Johnny [Depp] during Pirates 2 because I had the basic outline and we had always felt like he’s very lizard like, some of his physicalities are very lizard-like. A year and a half later we showed him the story reel and he loved it."
Rango is the first movie for Verbinski since Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End back in 2007. And he has been linked with a whole host of projects including The Host and Clue.
Rango will be released in 2011.
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