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American actor Johnny Depp is set to don his directorial cap for the first time in 25 years as he is going to make a feature film on Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani.
As per Deadline, the 59-year-old star will also co-produce the film alongside Al Pacino and Barry Navidi, which will be based on Modigliani's life over the course of 48 hours who perished in the 1920s due to poverty.
Modigliani will chronicle the painter's life in Paris in 1916 and will be based on Dennis McIntyre's play that premiered in 1979. The film will be Johnny Depp's second project as a director. He first directed the 1997 film, The Brave, which also featured Marlon Brando.
All you need to know about Johnny Depp's film inspiration, Amedeo Modigliani
Born on July 12, 1884, Amedeo Modigliani was a native of Livorno, Italy. He was a painter and a sculptor whose art was heavily dominated by elongated figures, asymmetrical compositions, and the use of simple lines.
Modigliani was the son of Jewish parents and shifted to Paris in 1906. There, he joined Montmartre’s art community and met several artists like Constantin Brancusi and Pablo Picasso, who inspired the reductive nature of his compositions. The artist also admired the classical Italian Renaissance painting, which he studied in Florence and Venice as an art student.
In 1912, he showcased his work of eight stone heads made in simplified and elongated forms influenced by the African sculptures at the Salon d’Automne.
Amedeo, who wasn’t a professional painter, not only painted his friends and known personalities from the Parisian artistic community but also unknown servants, models, and neighborhood people. In 1917, he began painting a set of roughly 30 big female nudes that are among his greatest works, with their warm, bright colors and sensual, rounded bodies.
As for his personal life, he started a live-in relationship with Jeanne Hébuterne in 1917. The duo used to reside on the Côte d’Azur with their daughter, who was born in November 1918. The artist had a range of diseases he suffered throughout his life, including pleurisy and typhus, which ultimately took his life in January 1920. Two days later, Hébuterne jumped out of a window, killing herself and their unborn child.
For several years, critical reviews of Modigliani’s work were overshadowed by the dramatic background of his life. Still, today, he is recognized as one of the most significant and original painters of his time.
As for Johnny Depp's forthcoming film, the production will reportedly start in 2023 in Europe. As of now, the team has not revealed the cast of the film.
On the professional front, Depp is currently shooting Maïwenn’s historical drama film, Jeanne du Barry, where he is playing the role of King Louis XV. The production began on July 26 and will be shot in several locations, including Versailles and other regions of Paris.
Johnny Depp recently won a high-profile defamation case against his ex-wife, Amber Heard, over an op-ed article she wrote for the Washington Post in 2018.
