Who Was That Masked Man?…George Clooney Up for Lone Ranger?

Hi yo, Silver.  

Just the other day we heard that Johnny Depp had signed on to play Tonto in a new big screen version of the classic B-movie/radio/TV serial, The Lone Ranger, with a script to be written by Pirates of the Caribbean scribes Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. This of course brings up the obvious question: who will play the Lone Ranger himself?

Considering what they did with Pirates of the Caribbean, I guessed that Elliott and Rossio weren’t going to make this a straightforward western, but rather a skewed, comic deconstruction of the story–which is fine with me, by the way. So I had suggested James Marsden for the masked man, because he’s just handsome in a way that verges on parody, and as we saw in Enchanted,  he can play a sort of cheerful stupidity that I can imagine working well in a fun version of the Lone Ranger.

But wait–perhaps I’m in the wrong demographic completely! AICN is reporting that George Clooney is interested in the part and is talking to Disney about it. Obviously, this is just a rumor, and even if it is true, it’s something that’s in early stages and far from a done deal–Nicolas Cage was apparently the previous hot rumor but that’s faded, much to everyone’s relief, I’m sure. But if Clooney gets the part, wow, I’m intrigued. That would put a whole different spin on the screenplay because you’d have to deal with the fact that Clooney, while of course still very handsome and still a leading man, is not a young guy. So I can think of at least two ways of doing it with that in mind–one is to approach it almost in a Don Quixote-ish kind of way, that the Lone Ranger is an older guy who’s pursuing a ludicrously romanticized ideal of the “cowboy as the ultimate good guy and savior of the west,” as often was portrayed in the old B-movies. Or you could come to the Lone Ranger after he’s been out…Lone Rangering for a long time and is disillusioned and disenchanted with the life but now finds one last meaningful goal, case, or bad guy to pursue.

I don’t know if this casting will happen, or what the story will be like, but if it does, this could be pretty good. Clooney and Depp–now that’s a fun couple I’d like to see.