Uh oh, Tonto, I hear there's trouble with the accountants at Disney.
Remember the whole big dust up when Disney pulled the plug on “The Lone Ranger” because the budget was projected to be $250 million? They didn’t greenlight the project until director Gore Verbinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer brought it down to $215 million.
Well, that’s what it was on paper. Real life is something different. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film’s costs have ballooned back up to $250 million, or possibly even more. The shoot, which began on February 28th in New Mexico, is said to be days, even weeks behind. Word is that Verbinski is being asked to cut scenes and rewrites are underway.
A Western should never be this expensive, but Verbinski is known for expensive movies and for running over budget. THR says that a big part of the expense comes from period trains that appear in the movie which Verbinski chose to have constructed from scratch rather than use existing ones. Meanwhile, weather issues such as dust storms have damaged the sets and caused delays.
The good news is that they’re hoping to finish filming by August, which leaves almost a year to pull the film together for its July 2013 release date. The better news is that the footage, with stars Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer, that has been seen is supposed to look great. So just a reminder–while a rocky shoot never makes anyone feel good about a film’s prospects, it doesn’t always spell doom. Let’s all just remember another movie that was plagued by rumors of problems, delays, and budget overruns during its shoot: “Titanic.”
