Whew! Johnny Depp and The Lone Ranger will fight werewolves after all!

I know you were really worried when it was reported that Disney had pulled the plug on THE LONE RANGER. I mean who doesn’t want another bloated, expensive, character reboot? But rest easy movie fans – Disney is set to give a trimmed down LONE RANGER a greenlight this week with filming set to take place early in 2012.

Stars Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer will still be returning to star as Tonto and the Lone Ranger, respectively, and Gore Verbinski and Jerry Bruckheimer will still be directing and producing. All have agreed to take some sort of salary cut (whether it be on the front or back-end) and the budget has been slashed from about $260 million to $215 million.

Unfortunately during this entire affair, it doesn’t look like anyone involved spent a whole lot of time creatively retooling the film. There have been a lot of meetings about numbers and budgets but did anyone really take a long, hard look at the script? You know, the one with werewolves and shapeshifters? Seems to me you could probably make a LONE RANGER movie for about $75 million if you take out those elements that no one really wants anyway…

Depp just wrapped DARK SHADOWS with Tim Burton and THE LONE RANGER should be his next filming project.