Disney Pulls the plug on The Lone Ranger

[nytimez]

Even $215M sounds like crazy money for this pic.

It makes no sense to me that this film should cost more than Cowboys & Aliens -- and considering that this one has no aliens, it should cost way less. And that film cost $160 million.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/03/the-lone-ranger-215-million-depp-disney_n_947765.html

'The Lone Ranger': $215 Million Budget Decision For Depp, Disney

The showdown over "The Lone Ranger" is coming down to a final financial shootout three sunsets from Saturday.

A few weeks back, Disney shut down the pre-production on the planned Johnny Depp-starring big screen remake, unhappy with a proposed $250 million budget coming from director Gore Verbinski.

The film called for Depp to star as Tonto, the Lone Ranger's traditional sidekick, in a kind of role reversal in which the Native American character would take the lead in the pursuit of justice. Armie Hammer, best known for his dual work in "The Social Network" and a co-star in the upcoming Clint Eastwood-directed J. Edgar Hoover biopic, was set to play the title character.

Depp and Verbinski have worked to pare down the budget, though the high-powered actor refuses to go ahead without Verbinski, eschewing suggestions that perhaps a less ambitious director would help with cost-cutting. Now, Variety reports that the two sides are set to meet early next week, following the Labor Day holiday, to hash out whether they can get on the same financial page and move forward with the film.

The shutdown was an unexpected turn of events, given the studio's massively successful partnership with Depp and Verbinski on the first three "Pirates of the Caribbean" films, which together grossed over $2.5 billion worldwide. But with Disney pouring big money into films such as "John Carter" and "Oz: The Great and Powerful," word was that they were uncomfortable putting a quarter billion dollars into production, and more into promotion, of a film based on a radio serial and 50s TV series.

The movie is a passion project for Depp, who has spoken of his love of the series and his desire to portray the famous sidekick in a more fair, powerful light.

Depp has a long line of other films on the docket, even if this one doesn't work out. He just signed on to produce and star in a remake of the classic noir book/film series, "The Thin Man," and is currently filming a big screen adaptation of the bizarre goth TV series, "Dark Shadows." There's also word that he'll adapt the TV show "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" into a film, as well as develop and star in a film based on Paul Revere.

 

[ASteelersMidget]

Or Not.........

http://movies.ign.com/articles/119/1196268p1.html

 

[mike the canuck]

Disney Eyes Early 2012 Start For ‘Lone Ranger’; Announcement Expected Next Week

By MIKE FLEMING

EXCLUSIVE: Deadline told you a week ago that things were looking up for The Lone Ranger for the first time since we broke the shocking news on Aug. 12 that Disney had pulled the plug over budget. I’m hearing that the studio is likely to have everything resolved by next week, and can start rehiring crew so that the picture will be ready to begin production in January or February. How that late start impacts the Dec. 21, 2012 release date remains to be seen, but Johnny Depp will get to play Tonto (Disney wouldn’t make the movie without him), and Armie Hammer will be back in as the title character. Ruth Wilson, the scene-stealing killer from Idris Elba’s British cop series Luther, is also expected back as the female lead.

Disney has gotten to this point after a painful overhaul of the movie by producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski to bring to $215 million a budget the studio feared could reach $250 or more. Verbinski’s struggle has been to reach that number while retaining enough of the spectacle that made them say yes in the first place. The cutting process has included the reworking of deals for Depp, Verbinski and Bruckheimer, and trimming the production budget and the long shoot. That would enable Depp, Gore and Bruckheimer to re-team after making the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films together. The Lone Ranger is one of several huge-budget films that Disney’s Rich Ross and Sean Bailey are managing. The others include John Carter, the Andrew Stanton-directed adaptation of John Carter of Mars with Friday Night Lights‘ Taylor Kitsch in the lead role, which has a budget around $250 million; and The Great and Powerful Oz, the Sam Raimi-directed James Franco-starrer, which is hovering around $200 million.

The Lone Ranger is on the verge of serving as an example where a film comes through the budget scrutiny process with a construct that can actually make Disney its money back. More than those other big Disney bets, I think the timing of the plug pull had everything to do with the dismal results of another ambitious Western, Cowboys & Aliens, a film that is going to lose a fortune for DreamWorks and its partners. Having a studio waffle isn’t fatal, however. While the architects of At the Mountains of Madness, The Dark Tower and Ouija struggle to regain footing after Universal dropped them for various reasons, worthy movies tend to find their way. That proved to be the case with American Gangster, and with Moneyball, which opens today.
Sony Pictures’ Amy Pascal took the painful and radical step of pulling the plug on that film a weekend before the start of production because a Steven Soderbergh rewrite so veered from the picture she had greenlighted. We’ll see how that film does in a brutally competitive weekend, but the Bennett Miller-directed film got a rousing ovation in its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival two weeks ago. And Soderbergh moved on and recently topped the box office with his viral thriller Contagion. Some of Hollywood’s biggest names are in the middle of these greenlight struggles, and this trend will become more common because the stakes are so high.

 

[Figment632]

I hope this happens as long as they keep their hands off BTMRR if they want a LR attraction build something new!!!!

 

[mike the canuck]

http://www.slashfilm.com/johnny-depp-calls-tonto-lone-ranger-salute-native-americans/

‘Lone Ranger’ Saddles Up After Participants Take 20% Pay Cut; Johnny Depp Calls Tonto a Salute to Native Americans

We’re still talking about Disney’s crazy-*** $215m Lone Ranger, to be directed by Gore Verbinski with Johnny Depp playing Tonto and Armie Hammer as the Ranger, because Disney is still planning to make the damn thing. The studio put the project on hold weeks ago, then went through quite a bit of public wrangling over budgets and fees. The movie that Gore Verbinski once described as “Don Quixote from Sancho Panza’s point of view” (with the Ranger being Quixote, making Tonto the lead) suddenly had werewolves — ******* werewolves — and giant expensive train sequences.

But the film got a green light this week, in part because many of the above the line participants — Depp, Verbinski, Hammer and producer Jerry Bruckheimer — agreed to a pay cut. There’s even a scheduled start date: February 6, 2012, with the producing aiming for a May 31, 2013 release date. To make that happen, quite a few changes were made. We summarize those, and pass on Johnny Depp’s intentions in playing Tonto, after the break.

Variety reports that many of the changes we’d heard about — Justin Haythe (Revolutionary Road) and Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio‘s script being overhauled to remove supernatural elements (werewolves) and reduce other costs. Depp even says that he and Verbinski knew that the budget was going to be a problem all along — were some of those elements planned as distractions that they knew would be cut?

The big aspect of the production now is that, after the big talent took a 20% pay cut and agreed to defer some fees until after the film is released, is that any budget overrun will be charged to Bruckheimer, not Disney. So Verbinski is on the line with his Pirates of the Caribbean producer. If he overspends, as he has done in the past, it comes out of Jerry’s pocket.

I half hope this is all some elaborate smokescreen to get a big, weird character picture — that Don Quixote variant — on screen with Depp in the lead role. That’s probably too optimistic. But Depp is at least being conscientious about Tonto. Speaking to MTV, Depp defends the project based on the potential he sees in Tonto:

I like the character… I think I have interesting plans for the character, and I think the film itself could be entertaining and very funny. But also I like the idea of having the opportunity to make fun of the idea of the Indian as a sidekick — which has always been [the case] throughout the history of Hollywood, the Native American has always been a second-class, third-class, fourth-class citizen, and I don’t see Tonto that way at all. So it’s an opportunity for me to salute Native Americans.

I can’t take any issue with that later sentiment at all. The idea of making Tonto the powerful figure in the classic Ranger/Tonto relationship is a good one, and the reason this movie ever seemed like it had potential. Note, however, that one could easily make a good film featuring a solid, respectable Tonto for a fifth of what Disney is planning to spend.

 

[mike the canuck]

http://www.slashfilm.com/william-fichtner-villain-the-lone-ranger/

Dwight Yoakum is out and William Fichtner is in. The talented character actor who is perhaps best known for his short but sweet scene at the beginning of The Dark Knight has been cast as the villain in Gore Verbinski’s 2013 Disney action film Lone Ranger opposite Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp as the Ranger and Tonto. Read more after the jump.

Deadline broke the news of the casting. They also broke the news last week that Yoakum was out and at that time described the role as follows:

Butch Cavendish, leader of the Cavendish gang and the pic’s primary villain.
Not much is known specifically about the film except that it’s expected to start shooting very soon, be released in May of 2013 and there were some major issues with the budget that forced Disney to pull the plug before producer Jerry Bruckheimer reworked things, trimming around $30 million. Here’s what he said a few months ago about the film’s issues:

We redid the production plan. We originally laid it out to avoid winter. Every single location we had, there was winter — 30s at night, 50s during the day, best-case scenario. We were jumping around. California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah. If we had a big crowd scene and then the next day we were shooting just Tonto and the Lone Ranger, we still had the crew “on” because you have them weekly. So we bunched the sequences that were big together, and for the smaller scenes [we] laid off the extras, the effects people, the makeup people. It costs an enormous amount with 150 extras on the set. It’s not the extras, it’s the people that support the extras. You’re still carrying all the wardrobe, makeup and hair people. We bunched together scenes with Tonto and the Lone Ranger, so we had a much smaller crew. We saved about $10 million just by doing that.

That said, things are looking up for Verbinski and his team. The cast is looking strong and Fichtner is a fine addition. Dare I say, he’s more menacing than Yoakum. And yes, that’s including Sling Blade and Terminator 2.

 

[mike the canuck]

"Disney has issued a press release confirming that The Lone Ranger has finally started production. Included is a synopsis for the film as well as details on filming and the cast."

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansi..._THE_LONE_RANGER_Has_Finally_Begun_Production

 

[mike the canuck]

First Look: Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer in ‘The Lone Ranger’

http://www.slashfilm.com/johnny-depp-armie-hammer-the-lone-ranger/

 

[mike the canuck]

Watch a Helicopter Trip Over The Lone Ranger Set

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/03/11/a-helicopter-trip-over-the-lone-ranger-set/

 

[mike the canuck]

‘The Lone Ranger’ Moves Back A Month

The Lone Ranger has moved back from its May 31 release to July 3, 2013, a date previously occupied by Steven Spielberg’s Robopocalypse.

http://www.slashfilm.com/release-dates-the-lone-ranger-moves-month-thor-2-week/

 

[Agent555]

This movie looks odd from the photos I've seen. But I still can't wait until it is finally released!

 

[diamondpixienc]

I hope everything goes smoothly and they get this film in the can. We are looking forward to it. We are also waiting on a legitimate trailor. My kids have exhausted everything pixar i.e. Brave and The Monster's Inc University trailor. DS says that I should add a countdown ticker for the Monster's University to my signature here now that Brave is finally in theaters. We are going to check it out this weekend BTW.

 

[mitros]

I don't think it will be our Fathers Lone Ranger, that's for sure.