July 12, 2013

My Lone Ranger insight

Now that The Lone Ranger is bombing at the box office, let's take a look back. Let's see who understood the business best: Rob or the thousands of people involved in making this movie.Does Hollywood have to fire all its execs before it can make a sensible decision? How does a Western with one star become a $250 million movie? This should've been a $25 million movie with relative unknowns in the lead roles.Rob, Disney Shuts Down Lone Ranger, Aug. 12, 2011And:There should be a $100 million "Lone Ranger" movie...anything more and you're misjudging the audience.Ignorant fanYou would have said the same thing before the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie, and you would have turned out to be wrong.Screenwriter Terry Rossio to ignorant fan, Lone Ranger Writer Denies Rumors, August 19, 2011Not-so-ignorant fan 1, Rossio 0.

Disney obviously thought Johnny Depp could mint money in any movie he did. In reality, Captain Jack Sparrow can mint money in Pirates movies, and Depp is still a quirky character actor in anything but Pirates movies. As I've been telling people for years.

He's Peter Sellers, John Malkovich, or Steve Buscemi, not Tom Cruise, Will Smith, or Tom Hanks. If he's in a blockbuster, it's an accident. It's not something you want to bet your company on.

For more on Johnny Depp and Tonto, see Why The Lone Ranger Flopped and Ranger too Racist to Reboot.

Below:  Johnny Depp and stereotypical Indians, the early years.

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