Disney’s 2013 reboot of theLone Rangerfranchise resulted inone of the worst box office bombsin Hollywood history, as its budget had ballooned to a reported $250 million and it grossed just $260 million worldwide. There’s been a longstanding rumor for a few years that, at one stage in its development, theLone Rangermovie featured a werewolf prowling around the Old West. Director Gore Verbinski has finally confirmed that this rumor is, in fact, true.
Verbinski departed from theLone Rangerreboot in its earliest stages of development in order to make the animated movieRango, also starring Johnny Depp.The Lone Rangerlanguished in development hell for so long that Verbinski wasable to completeRangoand return to the director’s chair before the cameras started rolling. According to the director, the werewolf draft came about while he was off makingRango: “Somewhere in the interim, without me involved, there was a werewolf. That’s where the werewolf thing came from, but I never read that draft.”
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After spending four years makingRango, theLone Rangermovie still didn’t have a director, so producer Jerry Bruckheimer asked Verbinski via Depp if he’d be interested in returning to the project and Verbinski said, “Well, I’d like to do the version I was originally thinking about.” During its time in development hell,The Lone Rangerhad veered into the supernatural territory – hence the werewolf – but Verbinski was more interested in telling a story about “the inevitability of the future,” and the onslaught of progress in the West with railroads and international trade. He wanted to evokethe anti-westerns of the ‘60s and ‘70sthat broke down the myths about cowboys and explored when they became obsolete with the advancement of technology.
Verbinski pitched this idea to screenwriter Justin Haythe and the two got to work on a new script draft, the one that ended up being produced and finally released into theaters in 2013. Although Verbinski, Bruckheimer, and Depp had previously found huge success reviving the swashbuckling genrewith thePirates of the Caribbeanmovies, they failed to do the same thing for the western inThe Lone Ranger.
According to Disney’s Alan Bergman, the studio never managed to make back itsLone Rangermoney on merchandising or other monetization methods. The movie was originally planned to launch a lucrative new franchise for the Mouse House, but the sequel was called off when the first one failed to turn a profit.
Now that Armie Hammer andJohnny Depp are both embroiled in scandals, a sequel seems even less likely. DespiteThe Lone Ranger’s box office failure, it did earn two Oscar nominations for Best Visual Effects and Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
