The Lone Ranger remake shut down by Disney

[Greg Cox]

It's stupid casting. Why not have Depp play the Lone Ranger and get an actual Native American to play Tonto?

So people might get up in arms about a White guy playing a Native American role, yet everyone thinks its fine for Laurence Fishburne to play a White role? Hmmm...

You really don't see the difference between allowing a minority to play a character that's commonly white (but doesn't have to be white) and letting a white man play a character that's very much established as being of a race that's pretty much a super-minority?

There's a world of difference between these two situations.

Bingo.

Tonto's Indian heritage is an essential part of his character. Perry White is a hard-driving newsman; his race has nothing to do with the essence of his character. Unless you're doing a 1930's period piece, there's no reason he has to be white.

Plus, of course, white actors have way more opportunities than Native American actors, so a white actor claiming one of the few roles specifically intended for a Native American actor is a much bigger deal than a Native American actor taking one of the five million roles that could be played by a white actor . . . .

There's no equivalency here.

 

[Captaindemotion]

I was just doing some math with an inflation calculator and it's amazing how expensive Hollywood films have become:

Thunderball - $9 million ($61.5 with inflation)
2001: A Space Odyssey - $10.5 million ($65 with inflation)
Raiders of the Lost Arc - $18 million ($42.6 with inflation)
Return of the Jedi - $32.5 million ($70.2 with inflation)
Jurassic Park - $63 million ($93.8 with inflation)
The Matrix - $63 million ($83.6 with inflation)
Revenge of the Sith - $113 million ($125 with inflation)
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - $185 million ( $187.2 with inflation)
Quantum of Solace - $200 million ($202.3 with inflation)

I'm shocked at how cheap 2001, Jurassic Park, and the Matrix are compared to 21st century films. The past decade has not been kind to Hollywood's bank account.

Wouldn't you think that advances in CGI would make movies cheaper, not dearer? I remember Lucas criticising the makers of Waterworld for filming at sea and using real locations. He reckoned he would have made it with CGI environments for much less.

Like someone said, it depends on how smart you are, I guess.

 

[CaptainCanada]

CGI does indeed make many things cheaper. But it also dramatically expands the possibilities for what you can do in a movie; if they were just using CGI to mimic practical effects circa 1980, that'd be one thing, but they're constantly pushing the boundaries of what the technology can do, and using more and more of it.

 

[Captaindemotion]

^ I guess. But as has been said, this is a Western, not feckin' Avatar!

 

[CaptainCanada]

^ I guess. But as has been said, this is a Western, not feckin' Avatar!

I was one of the first to say that. Even with supernatural elements, I have no idea how they get to 200+ million. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was made for 90 million.

 

[Captaindemotion]

^ And as regards the supernatural elements, am I the only one who would have liked to see a straight re-telling of the LR story? Something in the vein of the Banderas Zorro movies (well the first one anyway). It was even from the same writers. But I guess when they re-united Depp with his Pirates director, they decided to stick with a winning formula and put in the supernatural. Silly, silly, silly.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Bruckheimer has a number of projects in development where he's trying to apply the Pirates formula. Aside from The Lone Ranger, he also has a version of Don Quixote in development where Don Quixote really does fight against the supernatural.

 

[JarodRussell]

^ I guess. But as has been said, this is a Western, not feckin' Avatar!

I was one of the first to say that. Even with supernatural elements, I have no idea how they get to 200+ million. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was made for 90 million.

Ford, Craig, Wilde, Favreau, Orci, Kurtzman, Lindelof, Howard and Spielberg together probably got 150 million out of those 200+ million. My guess.

 

[CaptainCanada]

Ford, Craig, Wilde, Favreau, Orci, Kurtzman, Lindelof, Howard and Spielberg together probably got 150 million out of those 200+ million. My guess.

That was discussing The Lone Ranger, not Cowboys and Aliens (which cost about 160 million).

 

[23skidoo]

So is "Cowboys & Aliens" perceived as a failure? Too bad. It looked like fun.

Based on outdated notions of what success means these days - that it starts and ends at the box office. But it's going to make a ton of money on DVD/Blu-ray and Netflix later on.

Of course, there are those who predictably are blaming the film's failure on it being 2-D:

http://marketsaw.blogspot.com/2011/07/cowboys-and-aliens-feeling-blue-this.html

I'll hold my tongue.

Alex

 

[marillion]

Guess i'm not too heartbroken.. But it would have been fun to hear Depp say (in the vein of Captain Jack) "What do you mean WE, keemosabe?"

You know it would have been in there somewhere...

 

[Nerys Myk]

If only white guys can play guys name "White", I'll need to rethink the casting of my Slappy White biopic.

 

[FordSVT]

It all depends on how smart you are with your money. Lucas made Revenge of the Sith for $113 million, while the guys who made Green Lantern blew nearly $250 million on that trainwreck.

It's hard to directly compare the development costs of a movie like SW:ROTS or LOTR:ROTK versus Green Lantern. Lucas (and Peter Jackson) basically produced those trilogies as one gigantic film. Separating their budgets is some tricky accounting considering the amount of crossover. Salaries are pretty straight-forward but other things... not so much. The Star Wars prequels are more like one, six hour movie, with a $350 million budget.

And GL had a $200 million budget according to IMDB and Wiki. That's a hell of a lot of CG work. They spent $9 million between April and May just on additional SFX resources to get the movie finished on time.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

It's hard to directly compare the development costs of a movie like SW:ROTS or LOTR:ROTK versus Green Lantern. Lucas (and Peter Jackson) basically produced those trilogies as one gigantic film. Separating their budgets is some tricky accounting considering the amount of crossover. Salaries are pretty straight-forward but other things... not so much. The Star Wars prequels are more like one, six hour movie, with a $350 million budget.

Plus Lucas owns ILM and Jackson co-owns Weta, so the cost of the FX work on their respective trilogies doesn't reflect what would be charged on other FX-heavy films.

 

[JarodRussell]

Ford, Craig, Wilde, Favreau, Orci, Kurtzman, Lindelof, Howard and Spielberg together probably got 150 million out of those 200+ million. My guess.

That was discussing The Lone Ranger, not Cowboys and Aliens (which cost about 160 million).

I got that mixed up. Where does that 200+ million figure even come from?

 

[Captaindemotion]

^ The story is that Disney doesn't want to spend any more than $200m on Lone Ranger; it was already budgeted for $250m, Bruckheimer and Verbinski had gotten it down to $232m, but Disney still thought that was still too much.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

If it's too upsetting or politically incorrect for Tonto to be played by a white guy, change the character so that he's a quarter Cherokee or something along those lines. Depp certainly looks like he's part Native American (because he is).

What's going to get people into the theater is Johnny Depp, not Tonto. Most of the potential global audience has never heard of Tonto, or The Lone Ranger for that matter. It makes no financial sense to change the actor to suit the character. The reverse is what makes sense.

There simply is no Native American actor in existence who can match Depp's box office appeal. If there were, believe me, studios would be falling all over themselves changing characters' ethnicity to let that guy play every role under the sun.

 

[Aragorn]

The story being told today is that the werewolves are what ballooned the budget.

Also, it's being reported that Tonto is the actual lead of the movie, not the Lone Ranger even though that's the title of the movie.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Just make a Lone Ranger movie. Cast the big lead/ box office draw in the role - Pitt, Damon, whoever. And cast a charismatic Native American as Tonto. Leave out the fecking werewolves. Make a rollicking good adventure. It's not that difficult. Worked for Zorro. Why not for The Lone Ranger? Oh, I give up!

 

[CaptainCanada]

Worked for Zorro.

That movie was actually considered a financial disappointment at the time, though its repute has grown subsequently.

There simply is no Native American actor in existence who can match Depp's box office appeal.

And so long as studios keep following your advice, there never will be.