Proof that there is some justice in Hollywood, Johnny Depp's latest big-budget star vehicle, The Lone Ranger, is set to become one of the biggest box office bombs in recent years, joining last year's likes of Battleship and John Carter as a testament to the fact that sometimes there are consequences to scarcely-veiled creative bankruptcy. Scoring negatively with critics as well as audiences - scraping 25% on Rotten Tomatoes - there has been much discussion this week regarding what this says about audience trends, Johnny Depp's career, and big-budget filmmaking in general. What's clear above all else is that Hollywood can evidently learn something from the colossal failure of The Lone Ranger. Whether they will or not is another question altogether, but here's a few points to nudge them in the right direction...
10. Johnny Depp In Make-Up Is Not Automatic Box Office Dynamite
Johnny Depp is reported to have made in excess of $300 million from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and given that he's made Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney several
billion dollars playing the mega-popular pirate Jack Sparrow - and let's face it, he is almost the sole source of that income - that seems like a pretty sound and fair investment. While Depp took a reported 20% pay-cut to star in The Lone Ranger - as the film's budget was a major point of contention before it was green-lit - it's safe to bet that he was still paid an exorbitant amount to star, and Pirates of the Caribbean is a large part of the reason why. Disney executives no doubt got complacent and assumed that slathering Johnny Depp in make-up and errantly lobbing him into any nascent franchise was enough to guarantee box office dynamite, which has clearly just been proven false. Hell, we need only look at the disappointing returns of Tim Burton's Dark Shadows - which also featured Depp in strange make-up - to see that this is true.