Together Tim Burton and Johnny Depp make up a dream team of cinematic collaboration and have made some of the greatest movies of the past several decades. Now Tim Burton is working on a new version of the Lewis Carroll classic Alice in Wonderland for Disney and it seems like Johnny Depp might be by his side on this one.

The news is that Depp is to be playing the Mad Hatter, a role I cannot wait to see him pull off. His past Burton-esque roles have been baffling and brilliant, and an iconic character such as the Mad Hatter must be an absolute dream for Depp.

A source close to the film has said of Burton that he “has had designs on ‘Alice in Wonderland’ since before he was famous. He has a knack for turning what seems like stories for just kids into gripping, spooky fables loved just as much by adults. He’s held out on doing ‘Alice’ until he got a big enough budget. Now this film is financed by Disney so money won’t be a problem.”

Scheduled for release in 2010, Alice in Wonderland will be the seventh time that the pair has worked together. Their previous collaborations consist of Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride, and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. And from those, you can take 3, 5 and 6 and put them straight into my top 25 films of all time.

I had wondered who would Alice be though? While she may not be blonde or a young girl, I’d still love to see Helen Bonham Carter as the lead role. It’d be a great twist! But it turns out, this earlier this week it was reported that the Australian-born teen Mia Wasikowska was in talks to star as Alice.

Alice In Wonderland, which will a live-action/motion-capture hybrid presented in Disney Digital 3-D, is scheduled begin principal photography this November.