Movies
‘The Lone Ranger’ Was to Meet The Wolf Man?
There’s a big story developing in Hollyweird that has secretly affected us genre fans. Maybe you heard about Disney’s epic The Lone Ranger, which was to be directed by the great Gore Verbinski (The Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean), and star acting sensation Johnny Depp. Deadline broke the news August 12 that Disney had shut down production after the ballooning budget reached nearly $250 million. While they’ve since updated the story that it could be resurrected in the coming week, word on the street is that it’s DEAD.
The importance to genre fans is that, apparently, The Lone Ranger was to be a $250 million dollar werewolf movie. Yes, you read that correctly. An updated article over at Hollywood-Elsewhere writes that the reason Ranger‘s budget was so astronomically high that Disney execs decided to shut it down was because it’s an effects-heavy CG thing due to being a kind of an Indian-spirituality werewolf movie — a.k.a., The Lone Ranger Meets the Wolfman. Further adding that a 3.29.09 draft of Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio’s script makes it clear it was going to be at least partly about some kind of Native American wolfbeast tearing victims apart and leaving a bloody mess.
Word had it that it was going to be a Tonto show – Tonto as the top dog and more dominant than the Lone Ranger. Tonto and the Indian spirits like Obi Wan Kenobi and the force. The driving engine was going to be Native American occult aspects worked in with werewolves and special effects. But flavored with doses of Native American spirituality in a serious way.
More speculation is that Disney got cold feet after Universal’s Cowboys & Aliens performed poorly, which is interestingly timed with the death of Ron Howard’s epic The Dark Tower adaptation. FEAR is nothing new in Hollywood…
The Lone Ranger was scheduled to be released Dec. 21, 2012, smack up against The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which opens Dec. 14, and the Brad Pitt-starrer World War Z, which was just slated for Dec. 21.
Look, The Lone Ranger could have been a big screen adaptation of those cheesy all-over print t-shirts!
Brendan Fraser is back for the upcoming fourth installment in The Mummy franchise from directors Radio Silence, and Michael Johnston (Obsession) is now in talks to join him.
The Hollywood Reporter lets us know tonight that Michael Johnston is in “early talks” to join The Mummy 4, which will release in theaters on October 15, 2027 via Universal.
Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, and John Hannah will reprise their iconic roles as Rick O’Connell, Evelyn O’Connell, and Jonathan Carnahan in the upcoming movie.
Radio Silence duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett (Ready or Not, Scream 5-6) are directing from a script by David Coggeshall (Orphan: First Kill).
Plot details are being kept under wraps at this time, but the brand new sequel is expected to disregard the events of the third movie, in which Rachel Weisz did not appear.
“It’s just really beautiful and scary and sweeping, and it’s awesome,” Gillet teases. Bettinelli-Olpin adds that the film “has all of the heart and the character that you could hope for.”
A remake of the classic Universal monster movie that took an action-adventure approach, The Mummy was released in 1999 and grossed $417 million worldwide. It was followed by The Mummy Returns in 2001 and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor in 2008.