Just when you think times couldn't get worse for director Gore Verbinski and his brand new action/adventure franchise, they do.
The Hollywood Reporter says that the poor box office performance of their latest blockbuster could cause Disney upwards to nearly a $150 million loss. Realistically speaking, for Disney that is equivalent to the $5 I won betting on UFC this past Saturday. It's terrible for them but I'm more interested in how this failure affects Disney's plans going forward with a number of projects. For starters, will they even greenlight a sequel? Gore Verbinski seemed pretty positive that this would be his next big franchise but it's apparent there's no market for it. The Lone Ranger clocked in just shy of under $50 million over its entire Fourth of July 5 day weekend release. For comparison, Despicable Me 2 made a killing with $140 million. With a budget of nearly $250 million and an unknown amount spent on marketing it is almost written in the stars that even if a sequel does head into production it probably won't be having an infamously large Gore Verbinski budget tossed at it. I don't think this spells impending doom for future Disney projects yet considering movies like Iron Man 3 are cracking a billion worldwide and J.J Abrams is pegged to direct new Star Wars films. There's also an already massively hyped Avengers sequel announced for 2015. It does however send a message that big budget Westerns are too risky financially. Remember Jonah Hex? The Lone Ranger may have been the last chance and hurrah for similar films. The blame cannot solely be placed on a conspiracy theory that Westerns are cursed though. I have seen the film and it is a tonally inconsistent hot mess that's overly long with little action. Maybe audiences are just wising up and skipping out on movies with unanimous negativity in reviews? Our own Nathan Bartlebaugh seems to have echoed those sentiments
in his review. Do you think we will a sequel? Should Disney start worrying? Are Hollywoods big budget Westerns forever cursed? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!