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‘Lone Ranger’ leading the list of box-office duds

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The good news for Disney is that there’s no sequel to last year’s epic box-office bomb “John Carter.”

The bad news is that its latest big-budget misfire, “The Lone Ranger,” is poised to take its place.

Hollywood is halfway through the summer season and barely holding its own against last year’s box-office, haul, with several big-budget films like “The Lone Ranger” performing well below expectations.

It looks like Hi-Yo, Silver! will get the old heave-ho at the box office this weekend following a rash of bad reviews and competition from kiddie franchise “Despicable Me 2.”

Despite Johnny Depp’s star power, the Western remake, which opened yesterday, has been savaged by movie critics and received an abysmal 23 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregation site. Universal’s “Despicable Me 2” scored a far more positive 74 percent.

“The Lone Ranger” is projected to take in between $50 million and $60 million over the five-day holiday weekend.

Problem is, Disney spent upwards of $200 million on the production.

“We think it is going to disappoint while ‘Despicable Me’ will be very strong in the $100 million range for the five-day period,” Phil Contrino, chief analyst at Boxoffice.com, told The Post.

“Despicable Me” accounted for 71 percent of all advance ticket sales on Fandango yesterday, putting it on track to be one of the biggest animated advance sellers of all time, while “Lone Ranger” took just 12 percent.

Heading into the summer season, analysts warned that a glut of wannabe blockbusters meant that some pictures wouldn’t survive the intense competition.

Cowen & Co. analyst Doug Creutz singled out “The Lone Ranger,” along with Sony’s “After Earth” and “White House Down.”

Indeed, “White House Down,” an action flick starring Channing Tatum, cost $150 million to make but so far has brought in just $37 million worldwide since its June 28 opening.

As for Will Smith’s dystopian “After Earth,” Contrino said, “Any time Will Smith can’t open in first place is a disappointment.”

Of course, none flopped as badly as last year’s “John Carter,” which forced Disney to take a $200 million write-down — one of the biggest in movie history.

So far this year, the box office has taken in a total of $5.3 billion, down 2.7 percent compared to last year, which got a big boost from “The Avengers” and “The Dark Knight Rises.”

The biggest movie of 2013 is “Iron Man 3,” from Disney’s Marvel, which has taken in $1.2 billion globally since its May 3 release.

Hollywood would be far worse off if not for some movies — “Man of Steel” and “World War Z” among them — that outperformed expectations and made up for the stinkers.

“It was a slow start in the first quarter; April started to surge and May and June were very strong,” Contrino said.

“2013 is running pretty close to 2012.”