A silver bullet to the head.

So, Disney got cold feet at the idea of shelling out upwards to a quarter-of-a-billion-dollars in a budget for a movie based off a property that was old back when your parents were young. Yes, The Lone Ranger reboot that had Johnny Depp slated as Tonto.

The premise of the Lone Ranger is that six Texas rangers are ambushed and left for dead. Upon discovery of the chaos, the native Tonto nurses the sole survivor back to health. Six graves are dug to lead the world in thinking that there was no survivor and the former ranger, “lone” as he is, adopts a vigilante role.

The usual gang of idiots behind the bloated The Pirates of the Carribean franchise were looking to do the same to this antiquated intellectual property as it did with the old Disneyland ride. Instead of skeletons or the reality of a man abandoning his life to bring his would-be-murderers to justice, they were going to go with werewolves. Naturally. And because no one gives a damn about Armie Hammer, who would have played the titular role, the 2009 script was based around Johnny Depp and the premise that Tonto was the main bad-ass.

You know what? Thank goodness this movie was ended. I hope it never get off the ground. As much as it would be nice to give the hundreds, if not thousands, of small-time laborers and technicians to produce this trash, The Lone Ranger was going to be basically the five people responsible for The Pirates of the Carribean having a two million+ dollar holiday producing something designated for Saturday repeats on basic cable stations.

Rumors that the failing of Cowboys and Aliens to rake in the world’s ever-shrinking disposable income put the kabosh on what Dread Central dubbed “cowboys and werewolves.” What I’d like to think is that the War on Drugs happened to succeed in delaying the shipment of high grade designer drugs to the Disneyland executives that a moment of sobriety allowed someone, ANYONE, to speak up and ask “Wait, they’re going to make a movie about what?”

Look, if someone wants to blow an amount of money on a shitty movie, do it on an original concept. Or, for the price of this one Johnny Depp v. Werewolves movie,  Disney could finance four 50 million dollar movies, or a combination of many other films that, with a low overhead, could make a lot of money. (spend 10 million, make 50 million = 40 million in profit > spend 200 million, make 150 million = -50 million)  

Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp already had their western movie. It was called Rango and it featured Bill Nighy as a talking rattlesnake. Look, these numbskulls had their turn goofing off.  Give the money to someone who bothered to not scan TV Land, RetroTV or the Museum of Radio and Television for ideas.

 

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