The Ballad of Rango

Unlike any animated feature you’ve seen before, Rango is an utterly unique story from acclaimed director Gore Verbinski, and features the voice of Johnny Depp and other regulars from Verbinski’s Pirates of the Caribbean films. Blending off-beat humor with a Gonzo visual style and the enduring heroic archetypes of the Western, this highly entertaining adventure marks the debut for Verbinski’s production studio, BlindWink, and is the first animated feature from Industrial Light & Magic.

An actor by nature, Rango has developed a habit of trying on different guises while in his lonely cage—his head filled with dreams of being a swashbuckler, a musician, a knight, and many other leading man types. When this hapless reptile wanders into the town of Dirt, he can’t help but play to his audience, assuming the role of the Western hero. Boasting of his gun-slinging prowess to the locals, he inevitably stirs up a hornet’s nest. Soon he finds himself at the center of action, wearing the sheriff’s star and forced to take on the fearsome gunman Rattlesnake Jake.

Rango, like its lead character, is a film that set out one day to find itself and did, to great effect. Illustrated with some of the most vivid and visually creative concept art produced for any animation to date, The Ballad of Rango tells its story like it is.

David S. Cohen has covered show business for 15 years, including more than a decade writing about visual effects for the entertainment bible, Variety. He is the longtime writer of Script Magazine's popular "From Script to Screen" series, and his previous book, Screen Plays, is a collection of those articles about the vicissitudes of Hollywood script development. He lives in Los Angeles.