The last time I read a synopsis for The Lone Ranger was back in July when Variety told us it would follow the Lone Ranger and Tonto as they look to take down the Cavendish gang after they attack the Texas Rangers. Simple enough, but lacking some key details.
Armie Hammer (The Social Network) was set to play the title character, Johnny Depp would play Tonto and Dwight Yoakam was going to play Butch Cavendish, the film’s lead villain.
With that bit of information being all we knew, the news that came down the pike recently telling us the film had been sacked by Disney due to a ballooning $200+ million production budget came as a bit of a shock. What the hell cost $200 million about a gang attacking some Texas Rangers? Well, it appears this wasn’t any old gang.
A source revealed to Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere, “It was always going to be a big Bruckheimer CG movie with traditional Bruckheimer elements with an eye toward being a tentpole, totally Pirates-style… It was never going to be a semi-traditional western…it was never going to be Zorro.”
To be honest, I’m not entirely gobsmacked, though I really should be. What exactly was this film going to be? Wells’ source continues:
“It was going to be a Tonto show mainly. Tonto as the top dog and more dominant than the Lone Ranger. Tonto and the Indian spirits like Obi Wan Kenobi and the force. The driving engine was going to be Native American occult aspects worked in with werewolves and special effects. But flavored with doses of Native American spirituality in a serious way.
“But then Cowboys & Aliens came along and tanked and Disney got cold tenderfeet, spooked by the idea of a pricey mashup. If Cowboys & Aliens had made $200 million, this wouldn’t be happening. A Bruckheimer-style western in the wake of Cowboys & Aliens is nothing anyone is feeling secure about at this stage. Trust me, the writers of tentpole garbage are all scared now.”
Okay, I can understand being nervous when you compare such a story to the recent disappointing return from Cowboys & Aliens. However, there is a major difference between the two films… Johnny Depp and Gore Verbinski, the duo that kickstarted the massive Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Johnny Depp alone brings in more of an audience than Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford combined when it comes to tentpole trash. So why skip town so quickly?
Wells also posted the following excerpt from Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio’s March 2009 script. Justin Haythe (Revolutionary Road) was the most recent screenwriter to come in for a rewrite.
I have to ask, does this news make you more, or less interested in seeing this project actually getting made? Or would you be perfectly happy with them leaving it in the trash?
I actually thought they were going to try to do something serious. To that point things get even more confounding when Wells’ source says, “Depp’s interest in playing Tonto is about fulfilling his Marlon Brando legacy… Depp is partly Native American himself and he was partly mentored by Brando, who was a big Indians’ rights advocate. So he didn’t want to do any kind of jaunty performance that plays it light and spoofy with the Native American thing. No Captain Jack crap this time around.”
So he was going to play it serious in some sort of goofy, big budget werewolves in the Wild West feature? It sounds like a mess to me.
The casting of Depp was always confusing. It just didn’t seem to fit or make sense unless he was going to create a character just as he did with Captain Jack, but I kept asking myself how that fits with Tonto? Now that I learn it was going to be some kind of Twilight Western in the same vein as Pirates of the Caribbean things are starting to click, but even then why would Depp play it straight? It’s too strange to even believe, but the excerpt from the script above pretty much seals the deal. Weird.
