'Lone Ranger' team: Critics killed our box office

The buzz on "The Lone Ranger" was dismal ahead of the movie's July 3 release, and its opening weekend box office wasn't pretty, either.

But according to The Hollywood Reporter, it wasn't from a lack of promotion. The trade reports that the Walt Disney Co. has suffered because of "The Lone Ranger's" marketing budget, and that the summer action flick could wind up costing the company $190 million.

In the eyes of the movie's stars, Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer, the would-be blockbuster would have played better with American moviegoers had critics not ripped it to shreds.

While doing press for "The Lone Ranger" overseas, the two co-stars said American critics were set against the project far ahead of its release.

“This is the deal with American critics: they’ve been gunning for our movie since it was shut down the first time, that’s when most of the critics wrote their initial reviews," Hammer told Yahoo! Movies U.K.  “If you go back and read the negative reviews, most of them aren’t about the content of the movie, but more what’s behind it."

When it comes to American critics, Hammer continued, "it’s got to the point ... where if you’re not as smart as Plato, you're stupid. That seems like a sad way to live your life. While we were making it we knew people were gunning for it. ... (T)hey decided to slit the jugular of our movie.”

Depp, too, thinks the criticism of the film had been set in stone long before it reached theaters.

“I think the reviews were written seven to eight months before we released the film,” he said. “I think the reviews were written when they heard Gore [Verbinksi] and Jerry [Bruckheimer] and me were going to do ‘The Lone Ranger.' They had expectations that it must be a blockbuster. I didn’t have any expectations of that. I never do.”

Well, at least Depp knows how to manage his box office hopes. After pulling in $29 million its opening weekend, "The Lone Ranger" has thus far made $86.8 million domestically. We'll see how well the masked rider performs in the U.K. when it opens August 9.