Gore Verbinski‘s The Lone Ranger hits July 3rd, and it seems sort of perfect for the Independence Day weekend. It’s a western on a massive scale with plenty of explosions and bullets to spare, but if the trailers so far haven’t sealed the deal, this last one should do the trick. For one, it downplays how ridiculous Johnny Depp probably is as Tonto and focuses on the action with a percussive ballet in the background that matches every trigger pull cut for cut. Justice is like the hawk. Sometimes it must go hooded:

I can’t get over Johnny Depp doing the whole “Kemosabe” schtick as Tonto. Can’t do it. Maybe with time, it’ll get easier, but it makes almost zero sense that amid a sea of modernized remakes and adaptations, Gore Verbinski and Disney would hold tight to a stereotypical trapping from a different era that didn’t seem to know any better. Why deconstruct Wonderland behind Burton but keep the “Me Wantum Wampum” accent on a character that no one under 60 gives a damn about? It’s a small detail, probably. It just seems extra ridiculous. At any rate, they’ve released a new trailer with a few more scenes, and it’s hard to deny that this thing looks fantastic — employing the kind of lush detail and slow-motion destruction that we’ve come to expect alongside the added bonus of top hats and petty coats. Check it out for yourself:

You know the story. At this point it’s basically the new shot heard ‘round the world: Disney has bought Lucasfilm for $4 billion, George Lucas is retiring from the Star Wars game, and three more Star Wars films are planned for production starting in 2015. Lucas and the new Lucasfilm president, Kathleen Kennedy, have stated that they have archives of story treatments for more books, TV shows, and films… but with Lucas stepping back from the property, who are they going to get to direct these next three episodes in the ongoing Star Wars adventure? Let’s take a look at some candidates, whether they be likely, unlikely, or long shots.

Casting Johnny Depp as a Native American was always going to be a strange idea. Even with him claiming his great-grandmother was part Cherokee or Creek, it’s tough to point to the decision and claim that it was motivated by a sense of the role and not by, say, Depp’s incredible bankability as one of the last remaining movie stars. Still, it’s nice to see that the first teaser footage from Gore Verbinski‘s The Lone Ranger – which stars Depp as Tonto and Armie Hammer as the masked avenger of the title – shows off just a hint of Depp’s wondrously stereotypical, “Me Wantum Wampum” accent for the flick. It’s one of those situations where perhaps a racial depiction from the 1930s wasn’t the best thing to keep in a movie for 2013. However, laughable white washing aside, the epic scale and gun metal patina makes the project look visually stunning. Since the film sees theaters in May of next year, expect to learn more about Hammer and Depp’s characters, but for now, enjoy a solid look at the adventurous tone:

The troubled production history of Gore Verbinski’s upcoming Johnny Depp- and Armie Hammer-starring The Lone Ranger is far too lengthy to fully recap yet again. Suffice to say, Verbinski wants to spend way too much money on the film, he and Disney have gone back and forth on a budget numerous times, and the whole project has almost been killed already due to the disagreements. But eventually concessions were made (including the cutting of an expensive sequence involving a train), and eventually the two sides were able to come to an agreement on a budget of $215m. Back in February we finally got word that production on the film had actually started. It looked like things had finally fallen in place for Disney’s latest crack at making a successful live action feature film, and everything was going to be okay. But that was in February. Now there are reports coming from THR that claim the film is behind schedule and once again over budget. How behind schedule is the movie? Somewhere between days and weeks. And how much have they gone over budget? Reports say that expenses may have swelled to $250m, which was the figure that Disney balked at originally.

After years with The White Stripes (R.I.P.), collaborative projects like The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather, an ex-wife/bandmate that everyone thinks is his sister, and now a new solo album, Jack White‘s been a busy man. While he’s no stranger to film, he’s never composed a film score until now. According to Disney, they’ve hired the slightly mad musician to score The Lone Ranger, the forthcoming movie from Gore Verbinski. The director has worked most often with Hans Zimmer, but there’s no denying that White has incredible musical talent. As for movies, White worked with Alicia Keys on the Quantum of Solace song “Another Way to Die,” he was featured in It Might Get Loud, and he also appeared on “Rome” – the album from Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi which was inspired by Spaghetti Westerns. It’ll be an interesting experiment to see how his vision and talent transpose to the screen.  

While it’s not like no film has ever been shut down in the middle of production, I’m still going to get right on my high horse and tell it plainly – I didn’t believe that Gore Verbinski‘s The Lone Ranger was going to get made until a press release telling me that the film has started production hit my inbox this morning. So, hey, look, a movie! The release reports that production has commenced on location in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado” for the Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer-starring film, which means that the cast and crew is probably feeling pretty damn quartered right now. These are the jokes, people! The release does later clarify that the production “will film exteriors and studio work in New Mexico, followed by locations in Arizona, Utah and Colorado.” The film’s production troubles – namely of the budgetary variety – have been well-documented over the past few months, with the film being all but killed back in August, followed by Verbinski’s vow to trim the budget just days later, followed by its apparent resurrection in October, culminating in it being officially officially back on the trail in December. And that’s not even to mention all the casting blather surrounding to the film. But despite all those problems, this Lone Ranger is indeed riding again.

William Fichtner is a badass. This has always been true, even as the character actor rocked his way through Baygasms and indie hits alike. With Dwight Yoakum out of Gore Verbinski‘s forthcoming Lone Ranger, there was a spot to fill, and the production has improved on its casting with the opportunity. Yoakum is interesting, sure, but no one touches Fichtner’s track record of stellar acting that makes everything he’s in just a bit better than it was before. So while Nathan questioned whether the acting singer’s departure was a bad omen in the link above, it looks like everything’s worked out for the even-better. Now the question is whether he can translate this into the kind of stardom the guy has deserved all along. It’s a massive movie with Johnny Depp pulling in crowds and a proven large-scale filmmaker, and even though he’s been in this position before, Fichtner has always been tucked away into a larger ensemble. Here, he’ll be even better equipped to steal scenes as well as boost (and get boosted) by actors like Tom Wilkinson (who will play a big boss villain). Fichtner’s role, Butch Cavendish, is the leader of a gang and the main villain facing off against Armie Hammer’s Ranger. That’s fertile ground.  At any rate, even if this doesn’t make him a household name, it’s still great to hear him cast in anything. Maybe there’s hope for this strange bird after all. [Deadline Destin]

There’s some more bad news for director Gore Verbinski’s seemingly cursed venture The Lone Ranger. This film, that Verbinski is making with Disney, has been in development for quite a while now, and it’s sure seen its share of ups and downs. Though it has a proven successful actor/director duo in Johnny Depp and Mr. Verbinski, and it’s dealing with the sort of  already-established source material that Hollywood feels most comfortable with, this film was also, at one point, coming in with a $250m budget. Five years ago, when the world was in considerably better shape, that might not have been a problem, but in today’s dicey climate, Disney decided that the financial risk was too great, and they ended up shelving the thing. That wasn’t the end of the road, however. Verbinski vowed to do whatever it takes, including making big budget cuts, to get some form of this film onto the big screen. It seemed like a long shot, but eventually it worked, and the once-$250m  movie got the go-ahead to move forward with a new, slightly tweaked script and a new, slightly trimmed budget of more around the $215m mark. When the new go-ahead was announced, it was said that the whole of the cast was still going to be in place, despite the extreme shift in scheduling, and that the film was going to begin shooting in February (which is now). At the time I had my doubts. Could a movie with names like Johnny Depp,

Every bit of movie news has to be taken with a fistful of salt. With so many moving parts, even the biggest players in the game sometimes see their work fall into the tall grass of development hell. That’s the bad news. The good news is that all of those times you shake your fist at a new project (be it remake or reboot) are warranted, but they don’t always get made. Sometimes, the stuff we’re dreading goes down in flames too. So it’s with that bittersweet spirit that we look back on a few announced projects that still haven’t been made. And might never be.

It may be considered old news since it happened a whole week ago, but Disney passing on The Lone Ranger is a remarkably good sign. It’s noteworthy for more than the average news of the day because it hints at a crack in the current foundation of studio thinking. It’s barely ever publicized, since a studio refusing to make a film is hardly newsworthy, but a project this high-profile, featuring talent like Johnny Depp and Gore Verbinski, that’s been reported on so thoroughly used to be a done deal. Now, that’s not the case. It’s not like this is the end of the story crisis or anything, but it’s the Hollywood equivalent of a crack addict putting down the pipe, and it should be celebrated.

Despite the fact that the storytelling went off the rails and the budget’s bloated to bursting, Gore Verbinski’s Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy ended up making Disney more money than most spoiled aristocrats will see in their lifetime. Given his rep as a franchise builder, I thought it was pretty shocking when Disney recently pulled the plug on his upcoming movie The Lone Ranger. Yeah, a $250m budget is ridiculously high for a movie about a couple of guys on horses, but with Verbinski teaming back up with his Pirates star Johnny Depp, and The Lone Ranger already being a property that people are familiar with, I figured this project would be bullet proof. Not so, as according to THR, a Lone Ranger with a $250m budget would have to hit upwards of $800 million to make a profit after all of the necessary marketing costs and shady backroom money trading were handled. Despite the fact that a movie needing to make more than three times its budget to turn a profit is ridiculous, and the surest sign that the studio system is broken, that’s just the way it is. And with John Favreau’s Cowboys and Aliens not coming close to that number this summer, pumping so much money into a Western isn’t a risk Disney is looking to take, even in their Pirates of the Caribbean and Alice in Wonderland magic man Johnny Depp is on board.

Universal and Gore Verbinski seem to be having a competition to see who can be crazier. Universal fired a big first shot back in 2008 when they signed a seven picture deal with Hasbro to make a whole series of board game movies. They seem to have wised up a bit as to what a ridiculous idea that is, as they’ve already ditched Monopoly and Magic: The Gathering movies, and they’ve now decided to cut ties with an adaptation of the murder mystery game Clue; but a strong case can still be made for their insanity. Mostly because Battleship will be coming out soon and will be the first of their seven picture deal that actually gets released. What would you rather see a movie about, a murder mystery or people blindly guessing as to which points on a grid are “hits”? Yeah, Universal seems to have completely lost their minds.

Cary Fukunaga will no doubt have a long and steady career because the young director came right out of the gate with the beautifully brilliant Sin Nombre and followed it up with a more than capable period piece in Jane Eyre. He’s an auteur who 1) is still building his style and 2) refuses to work within one genre. Even if he’s still developing his signature, hopefully Fukunaga will bring his sense of atmosphere and environment to his forthcoming sci-fi drama. Spaceless, according to The Hollywood Reporter, tells the story of “an assassin who wakes up inside a spacesuit tumbling helplessly through space, with a computer designed to keep him company until his air runs out. He must try to solve the mystery of his death, which began when he broke into an orbiting space station to carry out a hit. The man, however, begins to question his reality, unsure if he is succumbing to madness or in an artificially created environment.” It’s a fun idea (that certainly borrows from other ideas), and it’s great to see Fukunaga continue to elude definition. The director will also rework the spec script written by Jeff Vintar (no stranger to sci-fi himself), Gore Verbinski will produce, and it seems like the only actor not up for the role would be Sam Rockwell because, well, you know. There’s no way they could hire Sam Rockwell for this. They’re going to, aren’t they?

A genre nearly as old as filmmaking itself, the western thrived throughout the years of the studio system but has zigzagged across rough terrain for the past forty or so years. For the last fifteen-ish years, the struggling, commercially unfriendly genre was either manifested in a neoclassical nostalgic form limited in potential mass appeal (Appaloosa, Open Range) or in reimagined approaches that ran the gamut between contrived pap and inspired deconstructions (anything from Wild Wild West to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford). But last December, True Grit – a bona fide western remake that relied on the opportunities available in the genre’s conventions rather than bells, whistles, or ironic tongues in their respective cheeks – became a smash hit. Did this film reinvigorate a genre that was on life support, as the supposed revitalization of the musical is thought to have done a decade ago, or are westerns surviving by moving along a different route altogether? Three westerns released so far this year – Gore Verbinski’s Rango, Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff, and, as of this weekend, Jon Favreau’s Cowboys & Aliens – suggest mixed directions for the dusty ol’ genre.

Ahoy! Yeah, I know that’s a lame way to start. Especially when you consider this week’s Commentary Commentary, our third, goes from essential classics like The Thing and Die Hard to Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. We’re not scraping the bottom of the barrel just yet, and even though Curse of the Black Pearl is by no means a bad movie, it just hasn’t reached a level of beloved nostalgia like our first two. Okay. Enough preamble. This DVD offers three separate commentaries featuring various members of the cast and crew, but rather than hear the insight Jack Davenport had to offer – we love you, Jack – it’s probably best to hear from the film’s director and star. So here, without any further waggery or warm-up, is what was learned from their commentary.

For a while, the only thing we really knew about Disney’s upcoming The Lone Ranger is that Johnny Depp would be starring, curiously enough, as Tonto. Then, as the project began to take shape, we learned that he would be re-teaming with his Pirates of the Caribbean and Rango director Gore Verbinski, who came on to helm things. Then the third big piece of the puzzle came into place when The Social Network’s Übermensch Armie Hammer signed on to play The Lone Ranger himself. And now that the big names are in place, it has come time to begin filling out the rest of the cast.

I’ve learned two new things about Johnny Depp after reading some comments that he gave Inside Movies. One is that he is very passionate about 50s era TV serials, and the other is that he is probably the most Native American man on the planet. What we knew already is that Depp is set to play Tonto in a big screen adaptation of The Lone Ranger with the original Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy’s Gore Verbinski set to handle the directing. What’s new news is that Depp thinks the character of The Lone Ranger is kind of a dick, and he doesn’t plan on letting him push his version of Tonto around. Depp says, “I remember watching it as a kid, with Jay Silverheels and Clayton Moore, and going, ‘Why is the f—ing Lone Ranger telling Tonto what to do?’” Dang Johnny, you kiss your mistress with that mouth? I guess now that I’m thinking about it, Tonto was kind of The Lone Ranger’s bitch, but is it really so serious that you have to curse about it?

It looks like everyone is throwing their hats into the ring. When the studios announced a plan to release movies in home theaters just 30 days after the theaters located outside the home (with a price tag of $30 per rental), the National Association of Theater Owners balked. Apparently their threat to boycott big blockbusters was a fake, but they haven’t kept secret their disgust for the new model that would limit their ability to make money showing movies (since studios take the 50%-100% lion’s share of the ticket split in the first weeks). Now, 23 directors and producers are speaking out against it. That list includes James Cameron, Michael Bay, Kathryn Bigelow, Guillermo del Toro, Roland Emmerich, Antoine Fuqua, Todd Garner, Lawrence Gordon, Stephen Gyllenhaal, Gale Anne Hurd, Peter Jackson, Karyn Kusama, Jon Landau, Shawn Levy, Michael Mann, Bill Mechanic, Jamie Patricof, Todd Phillips, Brett Ratner, Robert Rodriguez, Adam Shankman, Gore Verbinski, and Robert Zemeckis. The full, un-edited open letter is below:

Gore Verbinski’s Rango is not a spoof or satire of westerns. It is, in fact, a genuine western. Keeping that in mind, Verbinski hasn’t made an animated film with modern “of-the-moment” pop-culture references and a wacky hip soundtrack. Rango is no Shrek or Madagascar. The archetypes, the story, the score (courtesy of Hans Zimmer) and style is done in an old-school fashion, but with a slight twist. This isn’t Verbinski’s first western outing. The Pirates of the Caribbean films are total odes to the western and even some of Verbinski’s smaller-scale films – such as The Weather Man and The Mexican – feature the stampings of the genre. As for the realism, Verbinski wanted to keep his animated feature as grounded in live-action filmmaking as much as possible. Here’s what the soft-spoken eclectic director had to say about not making a western spoof, avoiding perfection in animation, and the meta aspect of Rango: