There’s barely an actor alive who doesn’t look up to Marlon Brando in one way or another, but Johnny Depp was among the select few who not only got to call him a friend but a regular collaborator.

That puts him in the same category as Jack Nicholson, who grew up as a fan of Brando’s first and foremost before becoming a peer, a colleague, a buddy, and then eventually a neighbour. However, when Depp worked with The Godfather icon, the results weren’t exactly what anybody could call stellar.

The pair partnered up for three films, and only one of them was released. Of the other two, one of them didn’t even get the chance to finish production, with Brando somehow conspiring to become an albatross around Depp’s neck. Either that, or it was the other way around, but history shows they weren’t the best match for each other.

The one movie they made that did get across the finish line was Jeremy Leven’s romantic dramedy Don Juan DeMarco, an offbeat independent feature where Brando’s veteran psychiatrist becomes increasingly convinced that Depp’s delusional patient might really be the greatest lover on the face of the planet.

When Depp made his directorial debut on 1997’s neo-western The Brave, Brando was drafted in to lend some star power to the ensemble in a supporting part. After a disastrous first screening, though, the first-time filmmaker decided to not only shelve the project, but make it unavailable in any format to prospective viewers in the United States.

In between those two points, Depp and Brando would appear alongside each other again in Divine Rapture, a period piece set in 1950s Ireland that was forced to can production after two weeks due to financial issues, with only 24 minutes of usable footage having been captured in that time.

Reflecting on the film falling apart in an interview with Playboy, Depp offered a frank assessment of “that sucked” when looking back on Divine Rapture‘s downfall. “One minute we’re filming, the next minute there’s no money,” he said. “It was like being in the middle of sex, right at the peak, and a guy walks in with a gun: ‘Stop it now.’ That’s when you feel shitty because it’s the movie business, based on money.”

Despite having John Hurt and Debra Winger on board alongside Depp and Brando, Divine Rapture was never picked back up again after the arse fell out of the movie. They may have been close right up until the latter’s death, but any attempts to reunite in the aftermath of Don Juan DeMarco hardly went according to plan. At least they got that one out of the way first, then, because neither the second nor the third time marked the charm for Depp/Brando double-act.