JOHNNY DEPP’s career is in BIG trouble as latest stinker adds fetid taint to once brilliant career as “LONE RANGER” joins “DARK SHADOWS” in the B.O. toilet.
After “The Lone Ranger” was gunned down over its non-colossal opening weekend, bringing Disney a mere $50 million against its budget of $215 million plus its $175 marketing budget, movie money mavens are saying the bloated oater will lose $150-200 million.
But the studio is not the only one to suffer as insiders say Johnny Depp is no longer worth his weight in gold and that his $20 million plus per-movie salary is about to be cut as pale-faced Depp, whether crow adorned Tonto or simpering undead Barnabas Collins, is washed up as a top money maker.
“The flop of ‘The Lone Ranger’ seems to be final proof that movie audiences have grown fatigued with Johnny Depp shoehorning his trademark character actor eccentricities into big budget tentpole films,” pop kult scribe Scott Huver told FOX411.
“What has happened is that the big franchise efforts have leaned too heavily on the basic appeal of Depp’s off-kilter approach freshening up mainstream fare and built too-flimsy structures around them. When they worked, as in the first ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ film and some of his earlier works with Tim Burton, they added a layer of freshness and unpredictability to otherwise familiar territory. Now what’s familiar is having Depp mine peculiarities to prop up the commercial prospects of uninspired fare and failing to draw in a new generation of fans.”
Other critics aren’t shy about salvoing Depp with a fusillade of suck-age.
“Depp’s recent string of box office failures strongly suggests that the idea of the box-office guarantee is well past its due date,” The DailyBeast.com reported.
TheWrap.com said that Depp has suddenly become a “dicey money-making proposition” adding “studio executives acknowledge that Depp’s bankability has taken a shellacking.”
And Vulture.com went so far as to damn Depp with “Young Johnny Depp would hate old Johnny Depp.”
Yet, Depp is the only thesp to star in three flicks that have made over $1 billion mark globally (“Alice in Wonderland,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” and “On Stranger Tides”), but his newer non-“Pirates” movies have tanked.
2012’s “Dark Shadows” cost $150 million but grossed only $80 million, 2011’s “The Rum Diary” made $13 million on a $45 million budget, and that same year “The Tourist” with Angelina Jolie (no less) stank, making back a mere $67 million on a $100 million budget.
Insiders say it’s time for Depp stay away from both Tim Burton and Gore Verbinski and perhaps take a loooooooong hiatus from filmmaking and reinvent himself as something a lot less quirky.
Perhaps, something a tad more manly.
