The high-profile defamation trial between Johnny Depp and ex-wife Amber Heard is set to be the subject of a new movie, Hot Take: The Depp/Heard Trial, which will stream exclusively on Fox’s streaming service, Tubi.
Depp will be portrayed by Days of Our Lives actor Mark Hapka, with Megan Davis (Alone in the Dark) has been cast as Heard in the forthcoming film, which follows the ex-couple’s tumultuous relationship in and out of court.
Station 19’s Melissa Marty will star as Depp’s lawyer, Camille Vasquez, and Law & Order: True Crime’s Mary Carrig will play Heard’s lawyer, Elaine Bredehoft.
Tubi and MarVista fast-tracked the project into production “to capture a timely take on a story that became part of the cultural zeitgeist, painting a unique picture of what millions watched play out in the headlines over the summer,” Adam Lewinson, Tubi’s chief content officer, said in a statement per Variety.
Directed by Sara Lohman and written by Guy Nicolucci, Hot Take: The Depp/Heard Trial debuts on 30 September on Tubi in the US.
Depp sued Heard for $50m (£40.1m) for allegedly implying he abused her in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed. Although she didn’t name him, he claimed that the article impacted his ability to work.
The two-month trial concluded on 1 July, with the jury siding with Depp, finding Heard had defamed him on all three counts.
Jurors awarded Depp $10m (£8.6m) in compensatory damages and $5m (£4m) in punitive damages, before Fairfax County Circuit Judge Penney Azcarate reduced the latter to the state’s legal limit of $350,000 (£305,000).
Heard won one of her three counterclaims, with the jury finding that Depp – via his lawyer Adam Waldman – defamed her by branding her allegations about a 2016 incident “an ambush, a hoax”.
She was awarded $2m (£1.7m) in compensatory damages but $0 in punitive damages.
In a recent interview, Succession star Brian Cox said he “felt sorry” for Heard during the trial and that he thinks she “got the rough end of it”. The actor also once called Depp “overrated”, a comment he later said he regretted.
