Lone Ranger Goes Boom! To Tune Of $150 Million Loss

Karloff

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Lone Ranger Goes Boom! To Tune Of $150 Million Loss



"Everything was perfect on paper," says Disney exec.

"It's very disappointing," says Disney executive VP worldwide distribution Dave Hollis about its blundering blockbuster The Lone Ranger [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/7660-The-Lone-Ranger]. It's tanking in the way that only a really expensive failure can, to the tune of a potential $150 million loss. "Everything was perfect on paper, so today was incredibly frustrating," Hollis added. To put that in perspective, it had a production budget of $250 million and worldwide marketing of approximately $175 million, so you're looking at something in the region of 35% of the total budget swirling down Johnny Depp's crapper.

Or perhaps that should be Jerry Bruckheimer's crapper. Here's a funny story: once upon a time there were concerns about the amount of cash that was about to be blown on what amounted to a supernatural western, particularly after the not-so-spectacular returns of Cowboys and Aliens. In order to persuade the folks at the House of Mouse that this was still a worthwhile thing, Bruckheimer agreed to pay for a portion of the budget overages - nobody knows the actual split - which means Bruckheimer could be carrying a chunk of this disaster on his shoulders. Bruckheimer's next Disney project is supposed to be Pirates of the Caribbean 5, a 2015 release.

Currently experts are predicting The Lone Ranger will take something like $125 million domestically. The overseas cash may be more enticing; even Depp's failures tend to do well - or at least not too badly - in the international marketplace. But Westerns tend to be more attractive to American audiences than anyone else, which could jinx its overseas earnings. It's impossible to say at this point whether this will be the silver bullet that puts a hole in Depp's star status, but since his was the most visible face in this implosion of a film, anything's possible.

Source: Hollywood Reporter [http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/disneys-lone-ranger-could-lead-581503]


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synobal

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"Everything was perfect on paper" says the disney exce that was in charge of the committee over seeing the development of the movie.

Seriously I felt like this entire movie was done by the numbers, like one of those old paint by numbers pages.

Also Pirates of the Caribbean 5? I've still not watched 2, 3, and 4!
 

sturryz

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How many bombs till they understand we are sick of manufactured bad movies?
 

MrBaskerville

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Awesome, i was expecting it to be the biggest succes of the year, since it seems to be total crap and since movies like that tends to be mega hits. Nice to hear that the average cinemagoers have a bit of common sense left in them^^. :D
 

DTWolfwood

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Oct 20, 2009
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I'm not the only one to see this coming.

Trailers were unexciting. Subject matter is last generation. Johnny Depp playing a stereotypical native is a bit insulting. The fact its called LONE RANGER and the star seems to be Depp's character is silly.
 

Thaluikhain

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"Everything was perfect on paper"

Ah-huh. Johnny Depp playing "generical native" comes to mind.

OTOH, Pirates 5? Eh, I only watched 4 because there are mermaids in it. Everything is better with mermaids (they went for a noticeably ethnically diverse group of mermaids as well, which is unusual).
 

CriticalMiss

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synobal said:
Also Pirates of the Caribbean 5? I've still not watched 2, 3, and 4!
Don't waste your time. But if you want to experience the sequels then just watch the first film another 4 times and burn a couple of fivers afterwards.

Lone Ranger looked kind of crap and on top of that suffers from white-itis. A Native American played by a white guy. That's probably nothing new in Hollywood, but you'd think they could at least have tried. I guess they just needed more star power to rake in some cash from Depp fans.

And does it really cost $175 million to market a film? That's more than half of the budget to actually make it!
 

Amaror

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CriticalMiss said:
synobal said:
Also Pirates of the Caribbean 5? I've still not watched 2, 3, and 4!
Don't waste your time. But if you want to experience the sequels then just watch the first film another 4 times and burn a couple of fivers afterwards.

Lone Ranger looked kind of crap and on top of that suffers from white-itis. A Native American played by a white guy. That's probably nothing new in Hollywood, but you'd think they could at least have tried. I guess they just needed more star power to rake in some cash from Depp fans.

And does it really cost $175 to market a film? That's more than half of the budget to actually make it!
Making sucky trailers is apparently pretty costly.
 

Chessrook44

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When they said "Everything looked perfect on paper" I was left thinking of this clip... [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsNrwHA6Big]
 

Ace Morologist

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If you're making a Lone Ranger movie, you've gotta play it straight and earnest. That's the whole point of the character. Also you've gotta cast a real native American dude (or chick, I could live with that) as Tanto. And you've gotta not spend a bajillion dollars -- it's just a Western, people. Show some restraint. Or ever learn... anything.

--Morology!
 

Flatfrog

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Chessrook44 said:
When they said "Everything looked perfect on paper" I was left thinking of this clip... [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsNrwHA6Big]
Whereas I could only think of Brian Clough:

"We had a good team on paper. Unfortunately, the game was played on grass"
 

Legion

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Oct 2, 2008
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CriticalMiss said:
And does it really cost $175 million to market a film? That's more than half of the budget to actually make it!
The funniest part of reading that for me was that I wasn't even aware of it's existence until I saw Moviebob had done an article on it. Even now I know about it, I still know absolutely nothing about what it is except a Western of some kind with Johnny Depp.

So their marketing money was clearly well spent.
 

fix-the-spade

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synobal said:
"Everything was perfect on paper" says the blind myopic disney exec that was in charge of the committee over seeing the development of the movie.
Fixed it for you. It's amazing how Disney thought a terrible script, full on racist casting and massive corporate oversight were the right ingredients. It's basically Prince of Persia all over again, take a good idea with a relatively small but hugely loyal fan base, whitewash it, add studio generic plot lines and archetypes and hope.

Still it could be worse, it could be Avatar: The Last Airbender.
 

Teoes

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Jun 1, 2010
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Isn't that what happens (or rather, what should happen in an ideal world) when art is shat out in textbook by-the-numbers fashion, instead of being a project that a person or some people actually wanted to make because they had something to say or a vision to produce?[footnote]See also Amazing Spiderman, X-Men: First Class OH WAIT THAT ONE WORKED and probably some others that I can't remember at the moment.[/footnote]

Yeah I know, says me and every other Caption Obvious/Hindsight person with taste and standards!
 

WouldYouKindly

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Anyone else see parallels between Hollywood and the AAA game industry? Both make massive projects that need to do unrealistically well for what they are.
 

hazabaza1

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From what I hear it's real bad so cool I guess.

And I guess this shows that it's not just the gaming industry with a big problem of ridiculously expensive budgets.