10 Movies Nobody Wanted To Admit Were Actually Remakes
3. The Lone Ranger Is Just Pirates Of The Old West
As mentioned previously in this article, Disney had already tried to replicate the Pirates of the Caribbean formula in a different setting before with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, but the next time they attempted to give it the old college try, they doubled down and got the entire band back together.
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Gore Verbinski, star Johnny Depp, writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio and composer Hans Zimmer were all reunited and handed the frankly ludicrous sum of $250m to make an action-packed Western in an effort to see if lightning would be able to strike twice. It didn't of course, with The Lone Ranger becoming one of the biggest box office bombs in history, but they tried at least.
This time around, the magic had truly worn off for audience interest in watching an eccentric Johnny Depp character and his comic relief animal sidekick team up with a reluctant and straight-laced partner, as they faced off against both a villain with a taste for the mystical, and an esteemed British character actor in a position of power representing the evils of modernization and industrial revolution. Not that they strayed too close to the Pirates template, of course.