I have done my best to avoid reporting on Production Weekly’s
140-characters-or-less Twitters announcing new project updates but their latest seemed interesting enough as they report, “Mike Newell is in talks to direct Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott’s big screen adaptation of The Lone Ranger at Disney.”
The project gained steam back in September 2008 when it was announced Johnny Depp would be playing Tonto in the filmed adaptation of the late ’40s and into the ’50s television show and a lone surviving Texas Ranger who was nursed back to health by the Native American Tonto who rides with him, on Silver and Scout, throughout the West, doing good while living off a silver mine which supplies him with income and bullets.
At one point George Clooney’s name was being bandied about as the title character, but those were only rumors. The writing team of Rossio and Elliott are probably best known for the Pirates of the Caribbean while Mike Newell has directed Donnie Brasco, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and is currently filming Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time for a May 28, 2010 release.
