You just know that, if you were sick of those 10 best or 10 worst listicles through the year, prepare for a surfeit of them to close the year. Some were designed just to fill space, but certainly a few were well-considered, with a solid factual basis.<\/p>\n
So we have an online publication, 24\/7 Wall Street, which reported about “The Worst Product Flops of 2013,” and there’s plenty of meat and potatoes to chew on among the seven items that are presented. For one thing, there don’t seem to be any obvious efforts to advance an agenda. Just let the facts fall where they may.<\/p>\n
Now among the listed products is a movie. After all, entertainment companies consider their work “product,” so it stands to reason that an expensive dud of a picture would get a prime listing. So we have Disney’s “The Lone Ranger,” an attempted reinvention of an old franchise that began as a radio show in the 1930s. The film allegedly cost around $250 million to shoot. With such A-list talents as Johnny Depp as Tonto and movie and TV producer Jerry Bruckheimer onboard, you’d expect a sure-fire success. Instead, Disney may lose up to $190 million from this unfortunate enterprise despite a worldwide gross of over $261 million, making it another Hollywood excess that went nowhere.<\/p>\n