Been reading up on the 1981 movie
The Legend of the Lone Ranger here. Boy, did things go wrong on that movie.
First, the producers (who owned the Lone Ranger character) decided to reinvent the franchise by casting a new Lone Ranger. This in and of itself wasn't a bad idea, but then Jack Wrather decided to sue Clayton Moore, the original Lone Ranger, who was still making appearances as the Lone Ranger and
was the Lone Ranger to many of the Lone Ranger fanbase (and still is), managing to order him to stop wearing the mask. You can probably guess for yourself how well this went over with the Lone Ranger fanbase...
Second, they decided to follow Superman in their casting (which had paid off with Christopher Reeve's casting) and cast an unknown over actors like Stephen Collins (1), Nicholas Guest, Bruce Boxleitner, and even Kurt Russell. The unknown's name was Klinton Spilsbury. Spilsbury apparently developed an ego when he arrived on set, changing lines because they were too short (this is nothing new), getting into a brawl, and basically acting like a big-time movie star--even though he was an
unknown in his first movie!!! Also, Bill Fraker, a first-time director, was not up to the task of directing, and Terry Leonard, a stuntman on the movie, nearly died after a stunt gone wrong.
To make matters worse, Spilsbury's voice was a little flat. This caused so much concern that they decided to dub his voice with James Keach. This, along with other post-production issues, caused the film's release date to be pushed back from December of 1980 to May of 1981. The filmmakers decided to have Ronald Reagan make an appearance at the premiere--then he got shot by John Hinckley, so he did a taped greeting instead. When the movie finally premiered on Memorial Day weekend, it was a flop (in part due to the aforementioned lawsuit, which really pissed off Lone Ranger fans), and the critics hated it (though this was also in part due to how Wrather had treated Clayton Moore; a Hollywood millionaire is never going to win against an old, beloved star of a TV series in the PR world (2)).
If one avoids the mistakes I mentioned, the Legend of the Lone Ranger probably does well (just don't treat Moore horribly, and cast anyone of the alternate actors who were up for the Lone Ranger role); have Moore endorse it and it's up there with Raiders of the Lost Ark as a top-grossing film...
(1) Though they dodged another bullet with Collins, as he was revealed years ago to have engaged in inappropriate behavior with girls in the 1970s. To be fair to Collins, though, there are no reports that he engaged in similar behavior in any of the movies or TV shows he starred in (if he had, that would have come out by now; hell, his 7th Heaven castmates didn't know this about him until it was revealed).
(2) TVtropes.org has stated that this move would have won Wrather a Razzie for Worst Publicity in a landslide, had the award existed at the time...