8. Nail Down A Good Story Before Green-Lighting A Movie
It should be common sense, but going by the reviews for The Lone Ranger so far, that isn't the case here at all. I can only imagine Jerry Bruckheimer pitching the movie to Disney executives with a few storyboard portraits of Johnny Depp made up as Tonto, and a blank face as the masked Lone Ranger (because screw him, right?), declaring, "It's Depp, what can possibly go wrong, right?" Executives likely ate it up, seeing the truckloads of money Pirates had made them, and wanting to see more of that Depp moolah. Greed likely ended up trumping their desire for a good story, because a) money will make you blind and b) more cynically, executives might have assumed that they didn't need a good story to make tonnes of cash. It's this sort of probable contempt for audiences that makes the film's failure more satisfying to observe; The Lone Ranger flopping is audiences saying to studios, "Try to force-feed us s***, and we're not just going to swallow it and say 'Thanks' anymore".