I expect the film will be a big hit with the audience being targeted and with the Depp / Burton fan base. That's all it needs.
Did anyone here see Captain America (2011)? This was a hit film by Marvel Comics new production company arm. It is a period action-adventure set in World War 2 (1942) in which a scrawny young man who wants to serve his country is rejected as 4F by the military. [spoiler] So he submits to a new experiment that weaponizes humans so that they can win in combat. But all the US Army can find for him to do is sell war bonds by making a fool out of him in a "captain America" costume. Gradually, he proves himself in combat, and wins acceptance. There is an emotional arc in his progress, and in believable interaction with other characters. There is an intelligent story at work. Then, after two hours of exposition, his plane goes down, and he is frozen in the Arctic for 70 years. But the movie isn't over yet. There is a brief epilogue, lasting less than twenty minutes, in which his body is recovered and he is revived. As the movie ends he is facing a modern world in Times Square, and with a bright future ahead of him.[/spoiler]
If Tim Burton had directed Captain America -- and if Johnny Depp had starred in it -- they would have reduced the two-hour period action-adventure to a brief prologue of about twenty minutes or so, then turned the film into a full-length farce about how Captain America comes to terms with modern times. Instead of making a classic, standard-setting superhero adventure, they would trivialize it with ridicule. They know how to ridicule. They don't know how to tell a legitimate story. They are preoccupied with their own kinky fetishes and kinky humor, and they think everybody else is the same way. They have enough of a fanbase to reinforce their insulated ego bubble.
The Dan Curtis estate exercised extremely poor judgment in selling the rights to Depp and his crony Burton. I'm very disappointed in the estate.
I expected nothing better from Pierson.
Richard