Gore Verbinski‘s The Lone Ranger is reportedly one of the longest principal-photography shoots in recent memory after having taken approximately 140 days to shoot and costing somewhere around $250 million.
What cost so much? Well, in a series of seven new images (via USA Today) we see one image of a period train accompanied by the following caption:
There are so many train scenes in The Lone Ranger that the filmmakers built their own period train. “It was a modern train clad in a steam engine just to get through all the work we had to do,” says Verbinski. “The train sequences are really entertaining.” The train robbery is an iconic Western shot. “But we turn it on its head.”
Only this morning we showed you video from the set where they were shooting a climactic moment involving a train and it has been said from the start that the original plan to involve werewolves went out the window as the massive train sequences were said to be sucking up the budget.
It’s interesting for me to even mention the budget of a film after having watched Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate over the weekend, a film that became known more for its budget and judged more for its budget and production woes than the final product itself. Similar situations have happened recently such as John Carter earlier this year and Waterworld in recent history. Will The Lone Ranger be similarly judged?
The film stars Armie Hammer (The Social Network) in the title role with Johnny Depp playing Tonto and is described with the following synopsis:
The Lone Ranger is a thrilling adventure infused with action and humor, in which the famed masked hero is brought to life through new eyes. Native American spirit warrior Tonto (Depp) recounts the untold tales that transformed John Reid (Hammer), a man of the law, into a legend of justice — taking the audience on a runaway train of epic surprises and humorous friction as the two unlikely heroes must learn to work together and fight against greed and corruption.
As I said, we have seven new images from the film just below. Click on the first thumbnail to scroll through the lot and look for The Lone Ranger on July 3, 2013.
