10 Big-Budget Movies That Were Doomed From The Start
9. The Lone Ranger
In the corridors of power at Disney, The Lone Ranger must have seemed like a surefire hit. After the multi-billion dollar success of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, transporting both the formula and the key creatives over to another fantasy-tinged genre blockbuster sounded like a recipe for box office success.
Yet the second it was revealed that the budget for the project would be a colossal $250m, many were already sharpening their knives. In fact, The Lone Ranger was so expensive that production was delayed for several months so that the money men could figure out how the hell this thing could possibly make a profit when it hit theaters.
Things didn't get much better from there. Aside from the controversy of casting Kentucky-born Johnny Depp as a Native American, the shoot was plagued by problems including wildfires, chickenpox and the tragic death of a crew member, and was given the dreaded 'cursed' tag by industry analysts.
Long predicted to be one of the biggest box office bombs of 2013, The Lone Ranger inevitably sank upon release and is estimated to have lost at least $150m for Disney, which was hardly surprising given the patchy commercial track records of previous effects-heavy Westerns such as Wild Wild West, Jonah Hex and Cowboys & Aliens.
Overlong, excessive, tonally-confused and massively self-indulgent, The Lone Ranger was everything the naysayers had predicted it would be from the very second it was announced.