It's been over a year and a half since we first learned that Johnny Depp would be playing Tonto in a movie version of The Lone Ranger. It's been a long year and a half for Depp since then, getting collared in the fourth Pirates film, signing on to the action thriller The Tourist, and presumably doing wheelies in the Disney parking lot with Tim Burton when he has a spare minute.

It was worth wondering if the Lone Ranger project would ever actually get going, but apparently the studio hasn't given up just yet. THR reports that Revolutionary Road writer Justin Haythe has been picked to write the Lone Ranger, just a few months after his work with McG on the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea remake sank when Disney canceled the project.

Based on that previous project, it seems that Haythe is a lot more genre-minded than Revolutionary Road would suggest, and may be able to do something worthwhile with a property that, right now, feels pretty mired in the past. If we hear about casting on the Lone Ranger himself sometime soon, we'll know Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer really are serious about moving this thing forward.