Disney gobbled up 90 seconds worth of Super Bowl pre-game advertising to air what amounts to a new trailer for Gore Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger starring Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer.
The spot begins with a tale of a masked man born in the desert, setting up the Lone Ranger as an almost mythical figure of legend. It is in the desert where the Indian Tonto (Depp) finds John Reid (Hammer) unconscious and left for dead. The desert transforms Reid into a man of the law, and apparently Tonto into a man of dry rumor as evidenced in the trailer’s final scene atop a train.
I’m shocked Disney was able to abstain from over-marketing Depp in their big game ad. There’s plenty of Depp, but he’s evenly balanced with emphasis on Lone Ranger as to not make it look like a primarily Johnny Depp film – as the Pirates of the Caribbean films have been handled. Whether this strategy works or not remains to be seen.
Disney has a lot riding on The Lone Ranger when the expensive production is released theatrically on July 3, 2013.
