Separating hits from flops at the box office
IN Hollywood, nobody knows anything. So said William Goldman, although you’d imagine that the man who wrote ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’, ‘All the President’s Men’, ‘The Princess Bride’, ‘A Bridge Too Far’ and ‘Marathon Man’, among many others, might know a thing or two about what makes a Hollywood blockbuster.
Things have changed a little in Hollywood since William Goldman was in his prime, however, on paper, ‘The Lone Ranger’ must have looked solid gold — a classic American hero, and with Johnny Depp on board to boot, it should have been looking at breaking all kinds of records, especially given its budget of almost $215 million. Its opening weekend was almost $30 million; by the time its US run ended in early October, ‘The Lone Ranger’ had earned back less than $90 million.
