Johnny Depp heads Gore Verbinskis Rango

Johnny Depp and his Pirates trilogy director Gore Verbinski are working together again on the animated pic Rango.

The movie follows a pet that heads out on an adventure to discover its true self. Since its CGI, it means there won’t be any weather issues, months-long location shoots or Orlando Bloom this time.

John Logan is writing the script for the Paramount-financed film, which has an opening date set for 2011. Verbinski’s going to pull double duty producing the ‘toon while also working on his adaptation of the Bioshock video game.

And ILM is bringing some high-tech tricks to the table which “will allow us to capture and translate every aspect of Johnny’s performance, using it to drive the computer-generated character in a way that has yet to be seen in an animated feature,” Verbinski told Variety .

New-fangled CG character work? Paging James Cameron! Someone’s after your thunder.