Actor Johnny Depp
Disney canceled its revival of 'The Lone Ranger,' which was to star Johnny Depp as his faithful companion, Tonto. Reuters

Walt Disney has shelved the production of Johnny Depp's planned adaptation of "The Lone Ranger". Apparently the executives at the studio were concerned about the massive $200 plus million budget. This news was confirmed by a person close to the production house. It was all set to star Armie Hammer as the Lone Ranger and Johnny Depp as Tonto.

Depp infact has been Walt Disney's most bankable star in the recent times raking in more than a billion dollars at the box office for his two films, this summer's "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" and the 2010 film "Alice in Wonderland."

However, the studio seems wary of taking up massive budget peojects after the recent "Cowboys and Aliens" underperformed at the box office. The studio maintains that its not giving up on "Lone Ranger".

"Its not dead and Gone," one Disney executive says. "It's a priority project for the studio. We want to make this movie," the executive added.

The decision may have come because the cast and crew features so many members of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" team: Depp, director Gore Verbinski, and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, just to name a few.

Its scheduled release date was Dec 21,2012.

"It's our intention to take a very careful look at what films cost," Bob Iger, Chief Executive of Walt Disney told analysts on Tuesday.

"And if we can't get them to a level that we're comfortable with, we think that we're better off actually reducing the size of our slate than making films that are bigger and increasingly more risky," he added.

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