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Now I know what you’re thinking…we’ve covered this topic before and you’ve made your opinions on sequels and threequels predominatly clear, please don’t bore us again. Well I’m not going to moan again about the state of modern cinema but turn your attention to this trifecta of news.

Not satisfied with bringing you triple bills of movies, Disney Studios’ chairman, Dick Cook, has announced at a massive event they staged in downtown LA yesterday the upcoming plans for the studio over the upcoming years and at the centre of it all was Hollywoods hottest talent at the moment, Johnny Depp. The theme to the power of three over spilled from movies to actors as it was announced that Mr. Depp would feature in three of Disney Studios upcoming features.

Depp will play The Mad Hatter in his good friend Tim Burton’s adaptation of Alice In Wonderland, which also features Little Britain’s Matt Lucas as Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee. He will also reprise the role of Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean 4 (what we can only assume will be subtitled ‘The Fountain of Youth’) and most surprisingly of all he will also play Tonto in the upcoming movie version of The Lone Ranger.

We weren’t really surprised by the first two items as you can pretty much guaranteea Burton flick will have Depp in it somewhere, somehow. The third Pirates hinted at another and with the money the franchise has made it seems stupid not to do it. Depp even has gone on record saying he loves the character and if the story is right, he’ll return. We can only hope we get a slight reboot, no more Keira Knightly or Orlando Bloom, lets have Jack on his own adventure shall we? But playing Tonto? No one saw that coming! There haven’t been any announcements over who will play the lead, but if Depp is the support you can only imagine they’ll have a legend to play the Ranger, hopefully not The Rock who seems to have appeared in all the latest Disney movies.

What are your thoughts? Are we going to be Depped out? Is Pirates 4 a ridiculous idea? Is casting Depp as Tonto going to cause a racial nightmare? We’ll find out. More as it happens.

Tim Burtons Alice In Wonderland is targeted for a release in 2010.