Johnny Depp traveling to "Tourist"

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Every tourist has some war stories.

The thriller remake "The Tourist" has run into another set of hiccoughs, with major players shifting around like luggage on a conveyor. Johnny Depp is in negotiations to play the male lead opposite Angelina Jolie, replacing Sam Worthington who has fallen off.

Additionally, director Florian von Donnersmarck ("The Lives of Others") has exited the project over creative differences, and Alfonso Cuaron ("Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban") is in detailed talks to step in. Bharat Nalluri was once attached to direct with Tom Cruise in the lead role.

Jolie herself was a recent replacement for Charlize Theron, who was long attached to the project.

The revamp of the 2005 French spy thriller "Anthony Zimmer" involves a female Interpol agent who ropes an everyman American tourist visiting France into being bait in the hunt for a wanted criminal who's also her former lover.

Production is scheduled to begin early next year. Graham King, the Oscar-winning producer of "The Departed," is financing and distributing through his GK Films' new output deal with Sony.

Depp has several films in the can -- "Alice in Wonderland," "The Rum Diary" -- but has been waiting to get his next project moving. A fourth "Pirates of the Caribbean" had been a strong possibility.