About five months ago, we told you that Jerry Bruckheimer was turning his eye to the old West and was probably going to revive The Lone Ranger. There wasn’t much confirmation at the time and the strike mostly put a stop to any new developments, but things are moving forward again. According to HR, Disney and Bruckheimer are going to put their heads together and try to wring some Pirates of the Caribbean style loot out of the old war horse.
Bruckheimer is in the process of hiring Pirates writers Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio to pen a live-action screenplay that will serve as an origin story for a potential franchise. Hopefully it will be the Elliot and Rossio that wrote the pretty good first Pirates movie and not the Elliot and Rossio that wrote the pretty crappy sequels. The duo also wrote The Mask of Zorro. Zorro is basically the Spanish colonial version of The Lone Ranger.
Since you can’t expect a mere writer to come up with an actual story for a big money-maker in the works like this, the basic plot of the movie has already been determined. A group of Texas Rangers are ambushed by an outlaw gang and wiped out. One Ranger (The “lone” Ranger, if you will) survives and is found by Tonto, who helps him recover. Together the two go after the outlaw gang and try to make the West safe. Then the settlers come and Tonto and all his American Indian buddies are mercilessly wiped out. That last part might not be in the movie.
I was actually something of a fan of the old Clayton Moore television show, but thought, like everyone else who saw it that the 1981 movie, The Legend of the Lone Ranger, had killed off interest in the character off for good. I’m sure Bruckheimer and his machine will put a slick, exciting movie on the screen in the near future. I’m just not convinced it will be very good.
