‘War of the Roses‘ Reboot With Johnny Depp and Amber Heard Would Be ‘A Great Idea’: Alice Cooper

The War of the Roses, a 1989 black comedy based on Warren Adler’s bleak novel of the same name, was a financial hit even as it simultaneously attracted and repelled critics like the Robert Ebert. The movie, which starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as the titular Roses,  was “a black, angry, bitter, unrelenting comedy,” Ebert wrote at the time, “a war between the sexes that makes James Thurber’s work on the same subject look almost resigned by comparison.” 

If you found yourself thinking of the late critic’s words as you watched Depp v. Heard, the Netflix docuseries about the 2022 libel trial between former husband-and-wife Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, you’re not the only one who saw parallels between the two doomed couples: “School’s Out” singer Alice Cooper says he told Depp the couple should work out their differences by remaking the popular film.

Cooper, who for 11 years has collaborated with Depp as part of rock band Hollywood Vampires, made mention of the reboot idea in an interview published today in the UK newspaper The Times. Though Cooper says Depp “never talked” about his stormy relationship with Heard, whom he met in 2009 during production on The Rum Diary, the rocker was able to glean from outside sources that the pair’s relationship went from loving to toxic over the course of their 2014-2016 arc from engagement to divorce. 

“I said, ‘I have a great idea. You and Amber do a remake of The War of the Roses. Who wouldn’t go and see that?’” Cooper says he told Depp, who lost a U.K. libel case against The Sun newspaper after it referred to him as a “wife-beater” but won a U.S. libel case against Heard after she referred to herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.”

The trial between the pair was a bitter one, not unlike the plot of the Danny DeVito-directed film. In the case of Roses, a wealthy and once-happy couple threaten and kill each other’s pets, physically attack one another, and damage their shared home. While Depp and Heard reached a $7 million divorce settlement after Heard filed a restraining order against her spouse, the Roses faced a far more miserable fate, both killed by a fallen chandelier during a particularly nasty fight.

Based on Cooper’s account, Depp tried to move past Cooper’s cinematic suggestion by turning the conversation back to the band. “He laughed. Then it was, ‘What songs are we doing?’” Cooper said. “Johnny is a good guitarist and in a way he would have been happiest doing that, playing side of stage in a band and not having to deal with the level of attention he gets.”