It’s not all drama and courtroom antics for exes Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Sometimes the updates in the two libel cases that Depp is pursuing are simply clerical. While the judge in London’s High Court continues to deliberate three weeks’ worth of evidence from Depp’s libel suit against The Sun for calling him a “wife beater” in a headline, Depp has petitioned the court in Virginia to postpone that trial until the spring. Coronavirus has delayed the shooting schedule for the next Fantastic Beasts film, in which he plays evil wizard Gellert Grindelwald, and now the shoot will interfere with the court date.
Heard testified on behalf of The Sun, their case premised on the idea that the headline in question was true, but the U.S. libel case is against Heard herself. She wrote a 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post in which she referred to herself as a victim of domestic abuse and strongly implied that she was talking about Depp, though she didn’t use his name. He’s seeking $50 million in damages. It goes without saying that Depp has denied all counts of abuse.
The trial is scheduled to begin on January 11, but according to court documents shared by Deadline and other media outlets, his team is asking that it be moved “sometime between March and June 2021” to accommodate filming. They filed the motion after his manager received a letter from Warner Bros. senior vice president of legal affairs Glenn A. Eckerle. According to the filing, Eckerle wrote that Depp is “scheduled to render services“ in London for filming “on an exclusive basis commencing in early October, 2020 and running through and including the middle of February 2021.”
In its petition to the court, Depp’s attorneys wrote that “though Mr. Depp is eager to proceed to trial, he faces an untenable situation over which he has no control.”
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