In an interview with
The Hollywood Reporter Jerry Bruckheimer talks about the production trouble with
The Lone Ranger and Disney.
He speaks about what led to production being shut down, the shock of the shut down itself, what's been cut from the script and the new release date for the movie.
How did negotiations get to the point where Disney shut down the movie?
We had a script that we kept working on. It was evolving. You start looking at locations, you look at the menu and say: "I like all these desserts. I want 'em all." And you hit a number and they say, "We can't afford that." Then you start cutting it back. Disney wanted to stop the spending unless they felt the budget corresponded to the number that the boss [Iger] wanted. They had set a deadline [Aug. 12] for us to submit a budget, and we didn't hit their number. They said, "Can you hit it?" We didn't have enough time to really vet the budget, and we said we couldn't hit it right away. And they said, "We have to stop the bleeding." We understood what they were doing, but we wanted to keep working.
Were you shocked that they shut it down?
It's always a shock when they actually do it. But I was still very confident that we could get the picture made. It took us about four to six weeks to figure out how to make the movie more economically.
Did you have to lose sequences from the script? There was talk that some train sequences were cut back.
We cut a sequence involving a coyote attack -- supernatural coyotes -- and a small animated segment. The train [scenes] are intact. We trimmed it a little bit. Gore made some sacrifices creatively, but nothing that would hurt the film. We had to work it out. The studio set a number, and it was always our responsibility to get to the number.
Because you missed your original start date, how do you feel about Disney moving the release from December 2012 to May 31, 2013?
It's a better date. Before, we were up against The Hobbit and World War Z. Now we're a week after Fast and Furious and a couple weeks before Superman. The competition is not as bad. There are a lot of movies jammed in at Christmas. In the summer, you have a longer run. You're cut off after the first of the year on a Christmas release.
Be sure to head on over to
The Hollywood Reporters full article where Bruckheimer goes on to talk about
Pirates 5 and his relationship with Disney.