Why is everybody picking on Johnny Depp?

It started with The Wrap,

Sharon Waxman's

much-bookmarked movie biz website, issuing an email with the subject field “5 Ways Actors Over 50 Are Avoiding the Johnny Depp Curse” and then following it up with another snarky missive linking to another story: “41 A-List Actors Who Bombed as Hard as Johnny Depp in 'Mortdecai.'  And true enough, the art world comedy caper, released Friday, Jan. 23, without previewing to critics (rarely a good sign), was greeted with gleefully derisive reviews   (“strenuously unfunny,” “a whirlwind of horrible British accents,” “an anachronistic mess”) and practically no box office whatsoever. Opening weekend: a scant $4.2 million, for a film that cost $60 million to make, and millions more to market (thank you, Lionsgate, for the argyle socks with the Mortdecai mustache pattern! ). By contrast,

American Sniper

(also strenuously unfunny), scoped out $64 million in its second weekend of release.

But

Johnny Depp

, despite his embarrassing presenter’s speech at the Golden Globes and a run of big screen thuds –

Transcendence, The Lone Ranger, Dark Shadows

– managed to parlay his

Keith Richards

imitation into a billion-dollar franchise, starring as that rogue swashbuckler Jack Sparrow in four

Pirates of the Caribbean

blockbusters. (A fifth installment,

Dead Men Tell No Tales

, is on tap for 2017.)  True, the shtick gets progressively shtickier as the series sails on, but Depp is central to the skull-and-crossbones tentpole (or flagpole). And no one can take these oddball and adventurous performances away from the actor:

Edward Scissorhands

and

Ed Wood

for

Tim Burton

,

Dead Man

for

Jim Jarmusch

(a couple of scenes with

Robert Mitchum

, no less!),

Donnie Brasco, Blow, Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas.

And though it’s too sweet for some, many more found

Chocolat

, with Depp as a gypsy wooing

Juliette Binoche

, disarming and charming and Oscar worthy.

Here’s what Depp (who cameos as the lip-smacking pederast wolf in

Into the Woods

) has lined up in the near future:

London Fields

, an adaptation of the

Martin Amis

novel, starring Depp’s current companion,

Amber Heard

, as the clairvoyant femme fatale;

Kevin Smith's

teen party romp

Yoga Hosers

(OK, this

is

going to bomb) and

Black Mass

, the true crime story of

Whitey Bulger

. Depp stars as the infamous Boston mobster, and

Benedict Cumberbatch, Sienna Miller, Kevin Bacon

and

Joel Edgerton

join in for the fun. The director,

Scott Cooper

, did

Crazy Heart

, which won

Jeff Bridges

his Oscar. Maybe one – or more – of these will find an audience, and people will stop picking on Depp. And if they all do fizzle out at the multiplexes,  well,  let Charlie Mortdecai saunter off into the sunset with his walking stick and his mustache and his ascot and his faux upper crust accent and what little dignity he has. Johnny Depp, we knew him when he was cool.