It is no surprise that a movie version of The Lone Ranger, the television Western running from 1949 to 1957 which followed the Texas Cowboy, the Lone Ranger, and his Native American sidekick, Tonto, has been in the works for a while. In 2008, Walt Disney Pictures officially announced they were going ahead with the project. Since then, the film project has picked up Johnny Depp to star as well as Gore Verbinski to direct, reuniting star and director of both The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and of the 2010 animated Western, Rango.

Well, Johnny Depp has just confirmed that The Lone Ranger isn’t going to be your typical Western (or follow the prototype of the original show). Instead, the movie will center around Tonto, who Depp will play, and the Lone Ranger will take on a supporting role.

Recently, Depp told Entertainment Weekly that he loved watching The Lone Ranger as a child but Tonto’s degraded treatment at the hands of the Lone Ranger bothered him. “When the idea came up [for the movie], I started thinking about Tonto and what could be done in my own small way try to — ‘eliminate’ isn’t possible — but reinvent the relationship, to attempt to take some of the ugliness thrown on the Native Americans, not only in The Lone Ranger, but the way Indians were treated throughout history of cinema, and turn it on its head.” And as Johnny Depp is part Native American (his great grandmother “was quite a bit of Native American, she grew up Cherokee or maybe Creek Indian”), this issue hits very close to home.

While the role of the Lone Ranger has not been cast yet, rumor has it that Armie Hammer of The Social Network is the new front runner after Ryan Gossling of Blue Valentine recently faded from that same spot. No word yet as to when the movie is set to start filming, but until then we can anticipate what Armie Hammer will looked like as the masked ranger.