Tim Burton stating, "I basically wasted a year. A year is a long time to be working with somebody that you don't really want to be working with." "Sleepy Hollow", released in late 1999, had a supernatural setting and contained another offbeat performance by Johnny Depp as Ichabod Crane, a detective with an interest in forensic science rather than the schoolteacher of Washington Irving's original tale. With "Sleepy Hollow", Burton paid homage to the horror films of the English company Hammer Films. Christopher Lee, one of Hammer's stars, was given a cameo role. A host of Burton regulars appeared in supporting roles
Johnny Depp in which he portrayed real-life gangster John Dillinger. The next Depp-Burton collaboration was "Alice in Wonderland" (2010), in which he played the Mad Hatter alongside Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway and Alan Rickman. The following year saw the release of the fourth installment in the "Pirates" series, "" (2011), which was again a box office success. Depp also voiced the title character, a lizard, in the animated film "Rango" (2011). Depp returned to Hunter S. Thompson's work with a film adaptation of the novel "The Rum Diary", which also became the first project undertaken by his production company, Infinitum Nihil.