The1970s was a period that allowed for a reinvention of the American filmmaking paradigm. The pendulum swung towards the directors, with studios like United Artists soon yielding to the whims of great filmmakers, spending a tidy amount and making solid profits. Rose-colored glasses would suggest these executives were not making money; they were, but they were worshipping not at the altar of commerce. Rather it was art that did enough to keep the lights on.
Then, like a ravenous Sean Parker meeting Mark Zuckerberg for lunch, Star Wars arrived and said, “You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.” Suddenly, studios started aiming product towards kids and inventing the notion of the blockbuster, which eliminated slow rollout releases and potential word-of-mouth. Ultimately, it depowered critics and surrendered the industry to the film as an accessory in a multimedia plan. The television show; the toys; the Halloween costumes. All became priorities almost as significant as the writing.
But art could still thrive and filmmakers continued to reach new heights in the wake of Star Wars and Jaws. Until Heaven’s Gate.
Michael Cimino treated his envisioning of the Johnson County War as a chance for an award-winning director to order a la carte. He stretched the budget of Heaven’s Gate beyond reasoning – the easy peace between filmmakers and studio to not demand too much money and to utilize a budget all agreed was reasonable had been tested thoroughly. Cimino shot forever. He cast non-bankable actors. He insisted on impossible shots. He went far, far, far overbudget. Heaven’s Gate ended up being a marvelous film second and a miserable financial fiasco first: An unwieldy, overlong historical tome that performed so poorly that it shut down United Artists, and placed all other filmmakers of his era on notice.
Effectively, Heaven’s Gate marked 1980 as the year that the most exciting filmmaking period in Hollywood died, because no one had the stones to say no to Michael Cimino.
For years, Disney has had plans for a film based on The Lone Ranger. With Johnny Depp attached to the racially questionable role of Tonto (echoing Isabelle Huppert’s contentious, questionable casting in Heaven’s Gate as a southern madam), they’ve long worked on creating an adventure film for all ages, despite the fact that the character hasn’t been relevant for decades. The union of Depp, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Gore Verbinski is not the sort to hear the word “No.” Depp alone just received $55 million to captain Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides across the billion dollars worldwide mark. Bruckheimer remains one of the industry’s biggest moneymakers from the producer’s chair. And Verbinski, architect of that Pirates series, recently won an Oscar for Rango.
For a long time Bruckheimer and Verbinski squabbled over the budget necessary for such a film. The participants involved had suggested $275 million, which was dialed down after the script was re-written to lower budgetary concerns. Disney refused to go over $215 million. Once they agreed on the lower figure, the production extended well beyond schedule, including costly reshoots, sending that agreed-upon budget once again into the realm of $250 million. A year after John Carter lost Disney hundreds of millions of dollars, they were going wildly overbudget on another questionable tent pole film.
Do not worry, Disney won’t be going broke over this – in fact, their summer of 2015 could find them releasing new films from Marvel, Lucasfilms and Pixar. But their interest in recovering the young boy demographic has run into snags, with Carter underperforming and Tron: Legacy only yielding ancillary success. The Lone Ranger may be the year’s most expensive film, within a genre (Westerns) that does not historically travel well in a time when new film economy suggests most films need to do 50 to 60 percent of their business overseas, at the least.
The recent blockbuster success of True Grit and Django Unchained gives Disney’s decision to bankroll a pricey western a bit of breathing room. Both were wildly successful both here and abroad, particularly Django, which generated $400 million plus worldwide, making it the highest grossing “Western” of all time. Those are incredible numbers. And they would be disastrous for The Lone Ranger.
A bit of Hollywood math...Films have a production budget, allocated to the shooting and post-production activities involved in assembling your favorite blockbuster. This could involve sets, actors, special effects, and above and below-the-line talent. After that, a promotional budget is created, usually referred to as P+A (prints and advertising). It’s costly to get a film out on 3,000-3,500 screens nationwide, the low-level norm for big budget movies. You’re also going to have to cut trailers, make posters, develop an online presence and pay for ads of all types. The high end of this is the $4 million needed to secure thirty seconds of ad-time during the Super Bowl. Granted, it’s not as high on an individual basis, but you can imagine the cumulative costs of paying for commercials during all of the highest-watched shows on television.
So let’s float the possibility that The Lone Ranger cost Disney $250 million to produce (the truth may be more). Since advertising for Tron: Legacy pushed into triple figures, you can assume Ranger will flirt with a $150 million ad budget. So that’s $400 million right there. Pretty expensive.
But here’s where Hollywood accounting comes into play. Studios usually earn, on average, about 55 percent of grosses, due to the other gross participants, which include theater chains, production companies and the rare lucrative participant who gets “backend” points (Ranger has three, in Depp, Bruckheimer and Verbinski, and some reports suggest they sacrificed fees for a bigger-than-usual backend). Internationally, films only secure 45 percent of the gross, due to all sorts of alternate distributors that require good faith negotiations. So, charitably, The Lone Ranger will have to gross $800 million to break even. Not to profit, but to break even.
Obviously, that’s a theatrical break-even point. While most in the industry seek to be in profit within days of releasing their films, the post-theatrical revenue streams are considerable. Disney makes a mint off their toys, television shows and merchandising, and they know how to maximize these streams better than anyone. So if Ranger grosses $800 million, there will still be a strong DVD performance to account for on top of the various merchandise that can be moved. Potentially, like all Disney blockbusters, this is a windfall.
Of course, can The Lone Ranger even score $800 million, the bottom-line expectation for Disney? Characters like Batman or Luke Skywalker are still viable, but The Lone Ranger carries about the same name recognition as The Green Hornet, an actual descendant of the character who had his own underperforming movie two years ago. Depp remains bankable, of course, but what do you do if the trailer plays in theaters to silence, as it reportedly has over the last few months? Or laughter, prompted by hot up-and-comer Armie Hammer? He was fantastic in his dual role in The Social Network and he’s certainly good looking and affable, but he’s still unknown to a large chunk of the population. Once they see that name pop up, do they respectfully wonder, “Who’s that?” No disrespect to Mr. Hammer, who is otherwise born to play action figures come to life, not as backhanded a compliment as it once was.
Moreover, the chief lure of the trailer, and reportedly the reason for budgetary increases, are trains. The hook of the film involves villains who seek to bring an end to the modern world with the advancement of train travel. Budgetary overruns were credited to the amount of train-on-train action with enthusiastic plant whispers buzzing about the excessive, over-the-top train theatrics in the film. As if this is meant to lure the kids of today – everywhere you go, tots can’t stop talkin’ trains! So far, the trailers released have only emphasized the camaraderie between Hammer and Depp, the wacky comedy of the premise (which, in itself, is a tonal gamble) and the train action. If the plot isn’t conveyed (or the villain performance by William Fichtner), then some are likely going to wonder exactly why one should bother. Indeed, early reviews have already mentioned that the story is unwieldy, overly complex, and reliant on, of all things, big business and boardroom corruption (you can read Den of Geek’s review HERE).
Could The Lone Ranger be today’s Heaven’s Gate? That film registered remarkably low grosses as it destroyed United Artists, but its impact was felt. With the death of UA and the symbolic end of that era in filmmaking, the failure of Heaven’s Gate stretched to every corner of the industry. All of this ignores that, if one sits down to watch the film, they’d recognize it as a flawed, but grandly ambitious effort that is at times an emotionally affecting chronicle of a very difficult moment in American history. The Lone Ranger likely wouldn’t be “bad” either, per se – Verbinski is an accomplished filmmaker and at a budget like this, there’s gotta’ be some unique visuals, no? Verbinski showed in the first three Pirates films that he was a capable mirth-maker who could construct elaborate comic set pieces allowing for maximum on-screen chaos. One must only look to the turgid Rob Marshall-directed On Stranger Tides to really appreciate how much he brought to the preceding three films.
But we’ve seen the well poisoned and we could very well see it again. The knives are out. Box office bombs in succession can often follow the flop of one particular film, as the summer of 2011 suggests. It’s not enough that The Lone Ranger kills a potential franchise and takes a chunk out of Disney’s coffers. Suddenly, the industry buzz surrounds declining box office grosses. A host of “Why People Don’t Go To The Movies Anymore” articles crop up. The Lone Ranger gets immediately labeled a BOMB and the next preposterously big-budgeted waste of time gets lumped in with it.
Studios begin to hesitate to loosen the purse strings. They say, “We don’t want another ‘Lone Ranger’ situation on our hands.” In some cases, that means shutting the door on the big budget directors of the industry. Or maybe just the Len Wisemans (Total Recall) and the Stephen Sommers’ (The Mummy). Guys who specialize in dopey blockbusters who will ask a studio for an extra $20-$30 million to realize their “vision.” More likely, they’ll crack down on the Bruckheimers of the industry, one-man crap factories who serve the broader audience with an avalanche of numbing junk annually.
The fact is the Hollywood studio model is showing its cracks. Films are becoming far too expensive and a studio is more likely to grab a profit from a few mid-to-low budgeted films per year rather than one big dopey blockbuster. A Hobbit or a Batman franchise can feed the studio for a good while. But the odds that that will work aren’t always in the studio’s favor. A little bit of 3D won’t exactly keep your company from losing hundreds of millions. Some companies have learned from this, and belts have been tightened. The amount of movies made today stems from the number of newer studios out there, but the major names have opted to release less product than usual. Last year, there were five months separating releases from Paramount. At the end of those five months, was there a blockbuster waiting? No, it was micro-budgeted Paranormal Activity 4, which performed weaker than the others in its series but, at a $5 million budget, was still immensely profitable.
The startling fact is that, after a regime change, there are plenty of fingers to point from inside Disney, to the point where the studio that is primed to survive a Lone Ranger bomb is the studio that is releasing it. John Carter was observed as a leftover from previous Disney leadership and The Lone Ranger was well into production when another administrative shakeup placed Alan Horn at the top of the Mouse House food chain. This movie could belly flop and it would have a corrosive effect on the industry. But Disney, with a mountain of proven IPs, could ostensibly shrug it off.
This wouldn’t even be Disney’s first big budget flop of the year. Earlier, they presented Oz The Great And Powerful, which seemed like a no-brainer, matching beloved material to director Sam Raimi, who was coming off three massively successful blockbusters (Oz even threw shade at Sony for their Raimi-less reboot, as their trailer boasted Raimi was “The Director Of The Spider-Man Trilogy,” basically hinting the series didn’t exist without their new golden boy). Oz came from the same fairy tale developments that sent Disney’s Alice In Wonderland to a billion dollar gross, but it also came from the studio mandate to target boys (hence, the casting of James Franco in the lead). The unwieldy marriage cost the studio a reported $315-$330 million in production plus P+A, suggesting an end result around $650 million theatrically would be ideal. Instead, the picture couldn’t even cross half a billion. And yes, it is 2013, and “couldn’t even cross half a billion” is somehow bad news.
The Lone Ranger is coming into a summer marketplace that has seen a few big studio hits thus far. But last weekend, the $150 million White House Down, which looked like a potential smash, opened at fourth in the box office and will end up being one of the more disappointing performers of the summer. Headed into the July 4th weekend, Lone Ranger is battling Despicable Me 2, both targeting a similar demographic, though only the former stands to be affected by negative reviews (there have been many thus far) and bad production buzz. Ranger would be the second straight ultra-expensive bomb by the studios and all it takes it a couple of those to shake the foundations of the industry. The studios expect the international audiences to pick up the slack, but what happens when they don’t flock like they did with Oz? What happens when they see Lone Ranger as a dated piece of American pop culture flotsam? More importantly for those overall numbers, what happens when Depp, Verbinski and Bruckheimer come calling for their large backends, which probably cut heavily into the 55 percent and 45 percent of the film’s domestic and international gross?
What happens is that the industry reports on a disaster. And today, your grandma knows how much John Carter cost. Your neighbor is fully aware that Depp’s Dark Shadows was a considerable bomb. Everyone knows about failing box office receipts, and when they’re reported heavily, the next part of the conversation seems to be acknowledging the substandard product. The only real world-of-mouth in the fractured Internet age comes from dollars. When they’re not coming in, it makes the industry look like they haven’t had a fresh or exciting idea in ages. Which, one could argue, is accurate.
Disney doesn’t think they’ll have this problem in 2015. That’s when they’ll be releasing The Avengers 2, Star Wars Episode VII, Finding Dory, Pirates Of The Caribbean 5 and a handful of other films, mostly directed at the same young demographic, hoping to snare a few adults as well. The thought seems to be that if The Lone Ranger lays an egg, moviegoers will still happily line up for the same blockbusters they did before. But all it takes is a couple of bombs, and Disney’s 2015 slate might be presiding over a scorched earth. It took one Heaven’s Gate to end the age of the auteur. The Lone Ranger won’t be the first flop blockbuster of its kind. But could it possibly be the last?
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