Tuesday, November 5, 2013
It wasn’t a huge surprise to Hollywood that the film didn’t do better. From the beginning the whole idea seemed a bit crazy. Westerns are very American which makes them hard sells outside of the United States. The film cost $215 million to make (even with the major players taking 20% pay cuts) and reviews weren’t great. The film scored a 25 out of 100 on Rotten Tomatoes.
But the weekend gross is undeniably bad news for the movie. Consider Disney’s biggest recent flop – John Carter. That filmed grossed only $30 million at the U.S. box office opening weekend but thanks to international audiences ended up earning $282 million globally. Disney still had to take a write-down on the $250 million budgeted film. The Lone Ranger is unlikely to get that international boost and Disney could end up taking another loss.
With Monsters University going strong and Iron Man 3 bringing in $1.2 billion, Disney will be fine.
But what about Depp? This is his second miss in a row. Depp’s last film, Dark Shadows, wasn’t an outright flop, it ended up earning $245 million at the global box office on a budget of $150 million. But considering that only about half of the box office receipts go to the studios and that budget doesn’t include the marketing costs, that film didn’t make money.
