Director Tim Burton may be tight-lipped on his next project, a remake of “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman,” but during a red carpet interview at the Marrakech International Film Festival, he was forthcoming about why.
“One thing I learned very early on is until I’m actually on a set doing something, I don’t know if I’m doing it,” he told IndieWire. “I never like to talk about things too much. I’ve worked on so many projects, sometimes they happen, sometimes they don’t happen, so I don’t want to jinx anything. I mean, I was doing ‘Superman’ once. There was another project that I worked for a year on, and it didn’t happen. It’s quite traumatic, it’s quite emotional.”
Inspired by his childhood love of monster movies and horror films, Burton is set to direct “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman” from a script by “Gone Girl” screenwriter Gillian Flynn for Warner Bros. He will also share production duties with Tommy Harper and Andrew Mittman.
Still riding high on the success of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” whose worldwide gross is edging toward half a billion dollars, Burton told the audience during a Marrakech Q&A not to expect him to repeat the trick. The 66-year-old director ruled out revisiting one of his most beloved films, 1990’s “Edward Scissorhands.”
“There are certain films I don’t want to make a sequel to,” he said. “I didn’t want to make a sequel to that because it felt like a one-off thing. I didn’t want to have a sequel for ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ because it also felt like a one-off thing. Certain things are best left on their own and that for me is one of them.”
According to Burton, someone not to leave alone is “Edward Scissorhands” star and frequent collaborator Johnny Depp. Though their last project together was 2012’s gothic fantasy “Dark Shadows,” when asked whether there would be another collaboration with Depp, Burton replied, “Well, I’m sure there will be.”
“I never feel like, oh, I’m going to use this and that actor,” he said. “It usually has to be based on the project I’m working on. That’s what film is all about. It’s collaboration and bouncing ideas off the people around you.”
Since emerging from a protracted court battle with former wife Amber Heard in December 2022, Depp has struggled to reclaim his A-list status. His most recent films, 2020’s “Minimata” and 2023’s “Jeanne du Barry,” were released to negative reviews and a small but vocal body of support. A project with the director that helped him become one of Hollywood’s most high-profile actors, particularly one currently enjoying his greatest success in decades, could be the ideal pairing. Depp is set to star in Terry Gilliam’s “The Carnival at the End of Days” alongside Jeff Bridges, Jason Momoa, and Adam Driver with production scheduled to start in January. He is also attached to Marc Webb’s thriller “Day Drinker,” alongside Penelope Cruz, marking Depp’s first Hollywood production in over six years.
Burton has had his own curious relationship with Hollywood, telling the audience in Marrakech that his days of working with Disney are over.
“When I was working as an animator at Disney, I was not very good,” he said with a wry smile. “Then they just let me draw and do whatever I wanted to do, which was incredible. Then I got the opportunity to do movies, but they didn’t really want to do my movies, so it was a very long and strange relationship.” Prompted, Burton opened up about the inspiration behind working with the animation giant.
“Creativity is based on love, passion, and maybe sometimes revenge,” he said. “These are all passionate feelings and sometimes it was hard for me to pick which was passion, which was revenge, or which was love because I treated any kind of studio situation I had as like being in a weird family. Sometimes they love you, sometimes they hate you and that seemed pretty normal to me. I have no bad feelings about the studio, but I do think my days are done. As studios get more and more corporate, I feel like there has been less room for people like me.”
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