Disney to cut Pirates of the Caribbean budget

It appears that Disney might have finally learned a lesson on their latest box office failure, The Lone Ranger. It has been a month after The Lone Ranger's release and the film has only hit $175 million at the box office. And that includes the international sales they were hoping to bank on. The film came with a hefty, and expensive, advertising campaign that didn't help the film one bit.
Now with that said, rumor has it that Disney is looking to significantly reduce the budget of the announced fifth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. The current budget sits at $250 million and they are looking to shave off at least $50 million. They also are looking to deprive producer Jerry Bruckheimer of the final cut he enjoyed from the previous four Pirates movies.

In addition to the failure of The Lone Ranger, Disney also had a huge embarrassment with John Carter back in 2012. The film had a budget of $250 million and only raked in $73 million in the domestic box office. Disney is apparently trying to avoid yet another box office failure and doesn't want this to become a trend. Although it seems they are already ignoring the obvious loss of interest in the Pirates franchise as Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides brought in just $241 million compared to the average of over $300 million the first three made. However, the international box office always messes everything up so it gives them a false sense of security and makes them think people want more movies.

Along with cutting the budget, Disney has brought in new directors for the fifth Pirates. Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg (Kon Tiki) were hired and are hoping to give some fresh light to the franchise.

The Lone Ranger gets destroyed at the box office

As if the reviews weren't bad enough, the opening box office numbers for The Lone Ranger have completely removed the landing pad for the $225 million dollar movie.

The film has been destroyed at the box office by none other than Despicable Me 2. The animated flick made over $34 million on opening day alone while The Lone Ranger failed to make $10 million. Yes, you read that right. It couldn't even break $10 million on opening day. The 5-day projection for The Lone Ranger is below $50 million while the projection for Despicable Me 2 is at $125 million.
In other words, The Lone Ranger won't even make back 25% of what it cost to make the film and that doesn't even include all the money put into marketing. At least not domestically. They are hoping that the international viewers will boost the box office revenue seeing that Johnny Depp is still pretty popular overseas. But let's face it... a bad movie is a bad movie. It doesn't matter where it's released.

It appears that Disney has yet another John Carter on their hands and it only proves one thing; they need original ideas and fast. Not to mention the fact that they need to tell Jerry Bruckheimer that you can't put Johnny Depp as a variation of Jack Sparrow in every Disney funded movie. I sure hope the rumors of them placing The Lone Ranger into the Disney Parks was just a rumor. This is just embarrassing.