Who Was That Masked Man? Conception and Reception in The Lone Ranger

One of the longest running franchises in the history of American popular culture-the Lone Ranger-“rides again.” In July 2013, the Disney Corporation/Bruckheimer film opened six years after the initial idea inspired an equally epic nine months of on-location filming, mainly in New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. A result of the brainstorming of director Gore Verbinski and initially the writers Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott who were trying to get the rights from Sony—all collaborators on the successful Disney franchise “Pirates of the Caribbean”—the possibility of the film really took hold when Johnny Depp declared his interest in playing Tonto, the long-time sidekick of the Lone Ranger. “So we hired Justin Haythe [to rewrite],” says Verbinski, “but one of the conditions was that I was going to tell this thing from Tonto’s point of view.… Otherwise, you miscast Johnny” (Rosen). With Depp’s reputation and the success of the “Pirates” franchise, the film emerged as Disney’s “tentpole” event of the summer with expectations of another blockbuster. But with the Western dead to contemporary audiences and the original franchise hero and sidekick unknown except to baby boomers, the typical Disney audiences—children and juveniles—were questionable consumers.