Right now Gore Verbinski is embroiled with Disney in an attempt to convince the studio that The Lone Ranger, his $250 million attempt to turn an old radio serial into a new blockbuster franchise. Things are looking good for the project, but apparently not so busy enough that Verbinski doesn't have time to make forward progress on some of his other producing projects. Deadline reports that Chernin Entertainment is about to acquire an untitled pitch by Mat Sazama and Burk Sharpless, which they plan to produce along with Vebinski.

And just like a lot of the other projects Verbinski has worked on-- except for the wonderfully weird Rango that is-- it sounds like the kind of idea that gets dollars signs flashing in studio eyes. Deadline describes it as "a futuristic Jungle Book," though they're not revealing any more details, in the grand tradition of tightly wrapping up any plot details about potentially gigantic projects. With the movie so vague and so early in the planning stages, it will be a long time before we get a real idea of what this is-- hell, it might be so long that The Lone Ranger might actually exist by then. Verbinski may be fighting hard to push that movie, with Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer, into actual reality, but he's clearly a director and producer who knows to keep all kinds of options open for himself as well.