Director Gore Verbinski primarily did the 2011 animated film Rango because he wanted to do a "small" film after the first three large-scale Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but admits he underestimated how painstaking and time-consuming animated filmmaking is. That being said, he also had a creatively altruistic reason for doing it, commenting on the nature of contemporary animated features in December 2011:
"There are shackles with the budgets and the profit margins. You want to compete with what they're doing at Pixar and DreamWorks. There's a price tag with that just in terms of achieving that quality level. What happened to the Ralph Bakshis of the world? We're all sitting here talking about family entertainment. Does animation have to be family entertainment? I think at that cost, yes. There's the bull's-eye you have to hit, but when you miss it by a little bit and you do something interesting, the bull's-eye is going to move. Audiences want something new; they just can't articulate what."
Verbinski sought to make something new and the result was a well-received and often beloved animated feature. Mission accomplished. Stay tuned!
Back in the days anything Depp was involved turned into gold.