Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway in Tim Burton's Surrealist "Alice in Wonderland"

Johnny Depp may be one of the most desirable men in Hollywood, but he looks far from handsome in his latest film role.

In place of his light golden tan and dark brown hair, Depp is unrecognizable with his curly orange hair, pasty skin and pink make-up as she plays the ghoulish-looking Mad Hatter in Tim Burton's upcoming adaptation of Alice In Wonderland.

The 46-year-old actor joins Anne Hathaway, Matt Lucas, Alan Rickman, Stephen Fry and Helena Bonham Carter in the eagerly-anticipated movie.

Relative unknown Mia Wasikowska, 19, from Australia, will be playing Alice, who is much older in the film than in CS Carroll's classic.

Seventeen-year-old Alice struggles to fit into Victorian society and is about to be proposed to in front of hundreds of people at a garden party.

She flees the party and spots the White Rabbit (Michael Sheen) and follows him down a hole and into Wonderland.

While film fans will have to wait until March 2010 to see the film, Disney have given them a taste of things to come with the first official glimpse of the cast in their garish costumes.

The look of the film is typical Burton style with Victorian styling and extreme colour contrasts.

As well as being transformed by their costumes, the cast's features have been digitally altered, making them look far removed from their normal selves.

As the tea-drinking, unbirthday-celebrating Mad Hatter, Johnny's eyes are yellow and enlarged.

Producer Richard Zanuck said: 'This character is off his rocker. He is so much fun and so nutty, I can't imagine anyone else doing it.'














via daiyl mail.co

Updated Trailer of Heath Ledger's Last Movie - The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Images via Just Jared

Wikipedia describes the film's plot thus:
In the present day, immortal 1,000-year-old Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) leads a traveling theater troupe that offers audience members a chance to go beyond reality through a magical mirror in his possession. Members of the troupe include a sleight of hand expert, Anton (Andrew Garfield), and a dwarf (Verne Troyer), Percy Parnassus had been able to guide the imagination of others through a deal with the Devil (Tom Waits), who now comes to collect on the arrangement, targeting the doctor's daughter (Lily Cole). The troupe, which is joined by a mysterious outsider named Tony (portrayed by Ledger, Depp, Law, and Farrell),embark through parallel worlds to rescue the girl.

Vanity Fair, meanwhile, notes on it's August 10th issue:

"The phantasmagorical dreamscapes in The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus are, judging by the newly released trailer, as wildly, awesomely imaginative as anything director Terry Gilliam has done since his absurdist animations in Monty Python’s Flying Circus: stepping stones floating among cosmically large high-heeled shoes; Tom Waits morphing into a cobra snake; a hot-air balloon (that Gilliam staple) made of a dozen faces; giant flying jellyfish… (As a diehard fan of Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, another film that dissolves the curtain between theater and fantasy, I was disappointed only by the extent to which the director has relied on computer graphics to craft his illusions.)

The film was Heath Ledger’s last. From the few clips we of his performance, Ledger’s manic theatricality stands up to Gilliam’s, and might even live up to his own Oscar-winning tour-de-force as the Joker in The Dark Knight. In the August issue, Peter Biskind wrote about the actor’s final days—he died of a lethal mix of prescription medication halfway through the filming of Parnassus—and about how working on this film provided Ledger with daily respite from personal tumult".



Other Heath Ledger posts in Lunatica

A humble tribute to Heath Ledger
Possibly last video footage of Heath alive
Heath Ledger portrait nominated for award
Jude Law, Johnny Depp and Colin Farrell to sub for Heath in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Jude Law, Johnny Depp and Colin Farrell To Assume Heath Ledger's Last Role

It is taking three top names: Jude Law,Johnny Depp,Colin Farrell– to step into Heath Ledger's final role, in the unfinished movie "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus", according to a rep for Law.

Speaking to the BBC, Law's spokeswoman confirmed that the three actors would play Ledger's role of Tony. She was unaware, however, as to how the part would be restructured in the film, which deals with magic.

Ledger, 28, was still shooting the $30-million movie, directed by Terry Gilliam and costarring Christopher Plummer, when he was found dead from an accidental overdose of prescription medicines on Jan. 22.

The BBC speculates that the production will retain its original footage of Ledger, with Law, Depp and Farrell each playing different versions of Tony.

The weekend before Ledger's death, he and Plummer had both completed the London portion of the movie's shoot and were due to continue filming the following week in Vancouver, Canada. Production was suspended when the tragedy struck.

At the time the production left England, Plummer told PEOPLE, "Heath was in very high spirits. He was just enjoying himself tremendously. It's a rather fanciful script, and he was wonderful in this role."

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