This is one of those rumblings that people are going to take seriously because news really sucks today. Although the New Zealand Herald is, we’re sure, a fine news source; this is the kind of thing you usually hear from Variety or a publicist.

Then again, maybe the Kiwis get information we don’t. That’s always possible.

Johnny Depp is holding open auditions to find screenwriters for his latest movie.

The Pirates of the Caribbean star will play surrealist painter Salvador Dali in new film Dali and is keen to get the right script, regardless of who it comes from.

A source said: “He’s open to working with anyone - from housewives to pensioners - if the script is right.”

Depp is not the only Hollywood star set to portray the eccentric artist on the big screen.

Al Pacino and Peter O’Toole are being lined up to star in rival movies, Dali and I and Goodbye Dali respectively.

Asked why so many films were being made 18 years after the artist’s death, Peter Rawley, producer of Dali, said: “Film-makers somehow pick up on the vibe. But three films is nothing, at one stage, we counted up to nine.”

Dali was quite the character, and not to bash Pacino or O’Toole, but both of those actors haven’t shown the range in the past couple years that Johnny Depp has.

Currently, Depp is off shooting the Heath Ledger fill-ins for Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus and has joked about getting involved with Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland.

Otherwise, his production calendar isn’t as full as it used to be back in the old days where his calendar was little more than “Pirate movie” scrawled across entire months in black Sharpie.