The Walt Disney Company may have got a shot of reality with The Lone Ranger, an expensive flop that may force the studio to write-down as much as $190 million during the next fiscal quarter. Giving producer Jerry Bruckheimer free reign to run the budget up past $200 million didn’t end very well, so the studio might take away the blank check for Pirates of the Caribbean 5.
According to two sources for TheWrap, Bruckheimer could lose authority over the film’s final cut and Disney may look to limit the budget on the film.
Disney didn’t comment, but a sign that the studio may have given a signal that it aimed to give Pirates 5 a smaller budget when it hired Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg to direct the film in May. The duo hasn’t worked in Hollywood before, but they made Kon Tiki, which earned an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film for 2012.
TheWrap’s two sources added that Disney is hoping that the directors can inject a new vision into a franchise that was previously helmed by longtime Hollywood directors Gore Verbinski and Rob Marshall.
The script for Pirates 5 isn’t even finished, but Johnny Depp is signed on to play Jack Sparrow again. Disney’s hoping that the budget can stay at $200 million.
As Indiewire notes, all the Pirates movies are well over two hours and also carried huge budgets. Still, the franchise has made nearly $4 billion worldwide.
Disney said yesterday that The Lone Ranger may cost the studio to take a $160-$190 million write-down for the fourth fiscal quarter.