First Look: The Characters Of Rango

Last week, Paramount Pictures released a teaser trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean helmer Gore Verbinski's computer animated feature film Rango.Well actually, the teaser trailer wasn't really a trailer at all — it was actually a video announcement piece for the website – RangoMovie.com. The website featured the same open road location seen in the announcement piece, with not much else.

On Wednesday, the site was updated with a few objects – the orange windup fish seen in the announcement piece, a small plastic palm tree, an old radio that plays music, a large toad, a mole, and a guitar. All the objects are interactive. If you touch the radio, music plays. If you toach the sleeping toad he complains, if you play the guitar enough, an Owl will come out and play a song for you. So here is your sneak preview at the characters for Rango.

A real movie trailer is expected to premiere later this month.

Based on an original idea by Verbinski, Rango is scripted by The Aviator scribe John Logan. Johnny Depp stars as an "chameleon with an identity crisis." PRevious information has stated that Rango  is "a oddly charismatic household pet that goes on an adventure to discover its true self." The movie co-stars Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Alfred Molina, Bill Nighy, Harry Dean Stanton, Ray Winstone, and Timothy Olyphant as The Spirit of the West.

But the most interesting thing about this new project is that Industrial Light & Magic will be doing the animation using "cutting edge techniques" that Verbinski has said, "will allow us to capture and translate every aspect of Johnny's performance, using it to drive the computer-generated character in a way that has yet to be seen in an animated feature." Basically it sounds like Verbinski has gone the way of Robert Zemeckis.

Rango it set to hit theaters on March 18th 2011.