A $250 million flop -- Lessons from 'The Lone Ranger'

The all-important July 4th Box Office weekend ended with a disaster for Disney. The studio spent $250 million producing 'The Lone Ranger,' which received mostly bad reviews, and what's worse, grossed only $48.9 million at the Box Office over the five day weekend. Universal, on the other hand, spent $76 million to make 'Despicable Me 2,' which took in over $142 million. These figures are U.S. and Canada Box Office only, but when you include international markets, the difference between the two films' performance only gets bigger. Disney reportedly spent over $250 million last year to make "John Carter," which only earned $30.2 million on its opening weekend, so I guess you could say the performance of their blockbusters is improving. Even with the money Hollywood routinely spends, when a $250 million film loses $200 million, people notice. No studio, producer, or director sets out to make an unpopular film. Certainly Disney had high hopes for Lone Ranger. The producer and Director, Jerry Bruckheimer and Gore Verbinski, were behind the hugely successful 'Pirates of the Caribbean' movies. Those films, and the Lone Ranger, starred Johnny Depp. The Lone Ranger has been a popular hero in the U.S. for years. Disney must have thought they'd have a hit with the film -- otherwise why spend that much money? Once again, a Hollywood studio has proved the truth of William Goldman's first rule of Hollywood -- "Nobody Knows Anything." In retrospect, we can see that the Lone Ranger had some problems in its conception that should have alerted studio executives they had problems to overcome. 1. Focus -- The movie is supposed to be the Lone Ranger's story, but the star (Johnny Depp) was playing Tonto -- and in bizarre white makeup with a dead bird on his head. While it's true that in 'Pirates of the Caribbean' Depp's Character, Jack Sparrow, wasn't the romantic lead (those chores were handled by Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley), Jack Sparrrow was still the main character, and the audience liked him. It's very difficult to make The Lone Ranger work when your star is playing the sidekick. 2. Strength of underlying material -- The last time those characters had a hit show was 1957 on television. There has never been a Lone Ranger movie that made a lot of money. That's in contrast to Zorro, another masked hero of the west, whose movies have always made money. This should have led the director and writers to work very hard to define the characters and their behavior. Instead it appeared that they spent most of their time trying to work out the big stunt set pieces. 3.At the end of the day, Despicable Me 2 performed better because the audience preferred to spend two hours with the characters in that film instead of with the Lone Ranger and Tonto. No amount of stunts, high concept stories, or hype can make up for a lack of character development. It's difficult to make hit movies -- if it was easy there would be a lot more of them and actors and directors wouldn't be paid millions of dollars per film. That's one lesson from the Lone Ranger. The other lesson can be applied to every piece of content -- make your characters and story unique and compelling. If you do, you can hold an audience sitting around a campfire. If you don't, $250 million of special effects won't be enough.