Walt Disney announced that they are pushing back the release of The Lone Ranger from its originally staked out release of Christmas 2012 to the following summer and May 31, 2013.
The move isn’t surprising. The winter 2012 date was announced when the film was slated to begin production this fall. However, delays due to finding a budget that both the studio and producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski could agree held the project in limbo until a resolution was reported just yesterday. Filming on the big screen adaption of the classic radio series is set to begin February 6.
Disney used the announcement to also unveil some other scheduling shakeups, most notably pushing Thor 2 from its announced July 13, 2013 date four months back to November 15, 2013. The change seem to be not so much the result of the new date for The Lone Ranger as it is to move Thor 2 out of a month that is already heavy with a number of other studios’ tentpole films with Steven Spielberg’s Robopocalypse, Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim and Joseph Kosinski’s Horizons all set to open in the weeks before Thor 2 was set to premier. Of course, this will mark the first time that a Marvel Studios film will open up outside of what has become traditional summer slots for their films.
