Johnny Depp currently stars as Tonto in Disney’s “The Lone Ranger”, which made just under $50 million over the 5-Day 4th of July weekend – flat-out AWFUL compared to “Despicable Me 2″‘s $142.1 million. “Ranger” is this year’s “John Carter” for Disney. And while it should do better than that film’s $73M total when it disappears from theaters in a few weeks, “LR” will certainly not make back its $250 million budget, at least in the US.
“The Lone Ranger” is also Depp’s fifth straight box office disappointment. The three-time Oscar nominee’s last legit hit was 2010’s “Alice In Wonderland”, directed by Tim Burton. When that film was released, 3D was really hot, so the high ticket prices helped “Alice”gross $334 million.
Later that year, Depp teamed with Angelina Jolie for the film that host Ricky Gervais (and Depp himself) made fun of at the Golden Globes for two years in a row, “The Tourist”. While the trailers actually made the film look pretty good, it was panned by critics and grossed a mere $67 million.
2011 didn’t start much better. I’m not counting the animated “Rango” in this list of recent Depp stumbles, though that also under-performed. The highly-anticipated “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” was released during the jam-packed summer season. It made $90 million in a decent opening weekend, but “Tides” went-on to become the lowest-grossing “Pirates” installment in the franchise.
And “The Rum Diary” was a Halloween weekend nightmare. Practically NOBODY saw this movie: $5M open, $13M total. Ouch!
Depp’s cameo in last year’s film version of “21 Jump Street” was well-received, but the TV-show adaptation that he starred in a few months later BOMBED. “Dark Shadows” was destroyed by “Marvel’s The Avengers” opening weekend and was never able to find an audience. Depp and Burton’s eighth collaboration was a weird mix of comedy and family drama that didn’t work well together, though the film did have a great look.
And now, riding to the rescue, “The Lone Ranger”. Well, not exactly. Disney designed this movie to be a star vehicle for Depp, even though he plays the sidekick. He can’t take all the blame for what could become one of the biggest disasters in Hollywood history, but he has to take some.
So, will Johnny Depp be able to recover from this slump and, if so, when? Probably. We’ll have to wait nine months to find out. His next film, the sci-fi action drama “Transcendence”, doesn’t open until next April. And Depp is reportedly part of the ensemble in Disney’s musical “Into the Woods”, due out Christmas 2014. He was cast just before “Ranger” opened in theaters. We’ll see if either side has any second thoughts.