Over the last three days or so news of Johnny Depp‘s The Lone Ranger returning back from budgetary hell has been swirling and now it seems all things are officially set to go as the budget has been trimmed from $250 million to $215 million, the creatives involved including Johnny Depp, director Gore Verbinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer have all reduced their fees and a source tells The Hollywood Reporter the filmmakers will sacrifice their back-end participation if the film comes in over budget.
Of course, with a film like this Disney is taking a massive risk considering a $215 million budget means a film that’s going to cost somewhere around $125-150 million to market worldwide, which in turn means we’re looking at a film that’s going to need to do something like $700 million worldwide to break even. Disney is looking at a similar situation with their upcoming $250 million budgeted John Carter adaptation as director Andrew Stanton (WALL-E) recently told the New Yorker, “[John Carter] will have to earn about $700 million to justify a sequel.”
As for The Lone Ranger, it’s now set for a May 31, 2013 release date after originally eying a December 2012 release. The move forces Disney to bump another one of their 2013 tentpoles, Thor 2 to November 15, 2013 from its previous July 26, 2013 slot. No worries, Thor 2 is still feeling itself out with Patty Jenkins the most recent director rumored to take over the helm from Kenneth Branagh.
Moving back to The Lone Ranger, last we heard the film was ditching the idea of having the titular hero battling werewolves with his silver bullets and instead being replaced with what was described as “three massive action set pieces involving trains… including one described as the biggest train sequence in film history.” However, none of the stories I’ve read on the announcement the film is now moving forward actually talk about the plot, so those beasts that howl at the full moon could still very well remain.
