04.20.2009
Article by Zombiezeus
'Lone Ranger' of the Caribbean?
IESB talked briefly to Jerry Bruckheimer, mega-movie producer extraordinaire, at a screening of "G-Force", which you will only care about if you have young siblings, nieces/nephews, children of your own, or you're trying to land a hot single mom with kids. But since the rest of us only care about movies we're actually going to see, and IESB understands this, they talked to Jerry about a project we haven't heard a lot about but should be excited for nonetheless: "The Lone Ranger".
"The Lone Ranger", if you recall , was announced last year by Disney to much fanfare, because Johnny "Jack Sparrow/Edward Scissorhands/Officer Tom Hanson " Depp will be playing Tonto and everybody was all "oooh another wacky period character he'll play huzzah!", etc. They still haven't chosen their Lone Ranger (my money's on George Clooney), but that hasn't stopped Ol' Brucky (as his friends call him) from talking about their marketing intentions for the movie:
"['The Lone Ranger' will be] geared more towards the Pirates [of the Caribbean] audience, 10 and up."
Which sounds solid to me. Those movies are an excuse to print money. In box office alone they've made $2.6 BILLION–and that's not counting merchandising and DVD sales, which are going to keep plenty of Disney execs from working at McDonalds for quite some time, I'm sure. I'm not sure "Ranger" will have quite as much reason to be embraced by the whole world, however, since it's a Western, and those are terrifically and specifically American, but it should be huge nonetheless.
I'm all for a movie like "POTC: Curse Of The Black Pearl", which was so purely, simply entertaining it made the other two bloated, confusing-on-purpose sequels all the harder to bear. As long as they have a good balance of action, adventure, humor, and amusing characterization, I think Disney will have another family-friendly franchise to rely on.