Two of next year’s most anticipated blockbusters are getting their release dates shifted. Gore Verbinski‘s big screen adaptation of The Lone Ranger starring Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer has moved from May 31st to July 3rd, pitting it against Despicable Me 2 and 20th Century Fox’s 3D re-release of Independence Day. Meanwhile, the Marvel Studios sequel Thor 2 being directed by Alan Taylor (Game of Thrones) will now open on November 8th instead of November 15th, giving it a much-needed two-week head start before the release of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

The Thor 2 release date move is a canny one as it will need all the time it can get before Catching Fire is released. While there’s no doubt that the original Thor was a successful film and has seen its following grow substantially in the wake of The Avengers, the first Hunger Games has the greatest appeal to younger moviegoers, particularly since both movies will be competing for those all-important holiday season dollars.

The release last month of the first image of Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer in character from next summer’s big-budget western adventure The Lone Ranger didn’t particularly set the world on fire. One of the major question marks surrounding the troubled production was how Depp would look as the Ranger’s faithful Indian companion Tonto. In the months before the release of the first Pirates of the Caribbean, images of Depp in character as Captain Jack Sparrow led skeptics to believe the eclectic actor had gone off the deep end and the movie would be an epic bomb for Disney.

Instead Pirates was a blockbuster smash that finally made Depp a bona fide movie star and spawned a billion-dollar franchise for the Mouse House. It also established the quirky and roguish Captain Jack as the first iconic movie hero of the 21st century. Pretty soon the stylish swashbuckler would become a popular Halloween costume as well. Depp had taken an unusual approach in his ideas for the character’s look, much to the consternation of studio executives already sweating over the movie’s gargantuan (for 2002/3) budget and the nagging uncertainty of a pirate movie, much less one based on one of their famous theme park rides, but the gamble paid off handsomely.

For several years now a movie based on the popular Bioshock video game franchise has been in development. At one point Gore Verbinski (the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies) was in the director’s chair, but couldn’t come to an agreement with the studio about the film’s projected budget and his demand for an R-rating. Verbinski assumed producing duties instead and Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (28 Weeks Later) took over as director. But now it looks like the Spanish filmmaker is no longer involved with the long-gestating Bioshock movie either.

“To be honest, by now, I’m completely out of that, and developing other stuff,” Fresnadillo said in an interview with the Playlist while promoting his latest film Intruders. “Right now it’s on hold. The studio and the videogame company, they have to reach some kind of agreement about the budget and the rating.” Despite the popularity of the Bioshock games the franchise has a very limited fanbase outside the gaming community and wouldn’t necessarily justify the sizable nine-figure budget required to bring the game to life on the big screen. Verbinski looks to be staying on as producer.

The first official image from next summer’s The Lone Ranger has been released, featuring stars Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp as the classic re-imagined western heroes the Lone Ranger and Tonto.

You can check out the image here below.

The Lone Ranger reunites Depp with the Pirates of the Caribbean team of director Gore Verbinski, writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, and producer Jerry Bruckheimer.

Now that the epic Walt Disney action adventure take on The Lone Ranger has survived that health scare and continued forward, casting has resumed.

The first to officially join Johnny Depp‘s Tonto, Arnie Hammer‘s Lone Ranger, and Helena Bonham Carter was female lead Ruth Wilson and the great Tom Wilkinson (both of which were said to be up for roles prior to the movie’s complications, but were only just confirmed recently), who’s set to play the film’s villain.

And now some smaller characters are being given faces with the report that James Frain, best known for his role as Thomas Cromwell on the hit Showtime series The Tudors, has now joined The Lone Ranger.