John Carter Might Be The New Biggest Box Office Disaster

As far back as 1976 and 1977, George Lucas had given interviews saying that part of the influence for Star Wars was the John Carter of Mars books. Countless other movies have done the same thing, but the books were in development hell for decades. Disney himself had optioned the books for an animated film in the 1950s, but that never happened. Cartoon director Bob Clampett tried to do an animated version going back to 1947!



I think the reality was, it was hard to sell a violent, action-adventure cartoon in this era. And the technology didn't exist to do the movie in the 1980s or 1990s. By that time, a couple of dozen movies had already taken the elements of John Carter that were imitatable and just stole them. So when we finally saw the movie in 2012, there was a big sense of "been there, done that."

I still say 50% of the reason for the movie's failure was that the hero was too dull and leaden, but that's just my opinion. I think Taylor Kitsch is good for certain kinds of roles, but not one like this where he has to be an alpha male with a lot of charisma.

 

Yep there is also the fact that Mars has not been an exotic local for decades now.

 

Ever since it was revealed that it ain't the kind of place to raise your kids, its reputation took a hit. Apparently there's no one there to raise them if you did.

I've even heard it's cold as hell, but I can neither confirm nor deny that...

 

I don't see a chance for a "John Carter of Detroit" movie, either.

 

Update: I'm reading the John Carter & The Gods of Hollywood book on how and why the movie failed, and I wanted to correct my date... Clampett did the "John Carter of Mars" cartoon demo in 1937, not in 1947! I was surprised to see this date, given that it was in color (which couldn't have been cheap).

 

It's a pretty good book that gives some keen insights as to why the movie failed--Inger the head of Disney really didn't want it to succeed with his eye on the prize of Marvel and Lucas' "Star Wars" franchise.

Seems like it was almost doomed from the start in spite of the talent behind it.

 

I don't think Mr. Iger wanted the movie to fail. But I think they catered to too many of Andrew Stanton's whims, including putting relative unknowns in the top roles, and letting Stanton push the budget up to $250 million. It started out at $150 million, and for that much money, the movie might have done OK (but not great). I also think the script was a huge problem, but I'll say this for Stanton: he gives some good reasons why they changed the story as they did.

Stanton appears to have cooperated to a point with the book, and there's many, many quotes from him throughout. The author clearly did a lot of research, but he could've benefited from a good editor and proofreader; there's tons of typos in the book.

 

There's also quite a bit of repetitive information as well. Still, a decent look behind the scenes.

 

And some of the information is repeated, too! I believe their source was the Department of Redundancy Department.

The biggest omission so far (I'm about 1/3 of the way in) is that the author provides a list of industry news sources on the web, but omits Deadline:Hollywood and The Wrap, which is pretty stunning since those are the two main sites. In particular, Nikki Finkie on Deadline had her knives sharpened for John Carter and broke many difficult and embarrassing stories about the film.

 

I've heard that "John Carter" book repeated information...

 

They are showing it on Spike TV now. It is OK for TV, but I wouldn't have spent money on it in the theater.

 

A Princess of Mars was Burrough's first published work, and the hero is pretty dull and leaden in the novel. I read the entire series when I was a kid, and it was for the exotic locations and the action, not for the quality of the character development. I read the Gods of Hollywood book last year, and it's pretty good, but I really think there is no way for the character to succeed unless they do a satirical take on the material and make it a partial comedy.

 

I used to read this anthropomorphic sci-fi adult comic book called Captain Jack. Captain Jack was from Detroit, and as they flew in from space, his never been to earth passenger asked if all the gleaming, modernistic towers were Detroit. He said, "no, that's Bangladesh." When they got to Detroit, it was still exactly as it looked in the 1980s.

 

I would have like to have seen it in Burrows dead pan style as a story of court intrigue ala Dune or probably better "Gladiator."

 

I was watching the MC5 documentary they made in 2002 and as they were driving around Detroit I thought to myself "Wow that place is more desolate and burnt down now then it was then."

 

I bought the Blu-ray of this and watched it recently. . . and really enjoyed it. I guess it's because I really liked the novels as a younstah, but this one just had the right tone and entertains me. Glad it got made.

 

Yes, I read the book as well and was kind of appalled that the author's opinion was that the movie failed because a) the studio failed to do more social marketing for it, and b) the studio regime changed a couple of times while the film was being made, so nobody wanted to support it. He didn't consider the third problem: c) the movie wasn't very good and it cost a lotta money.

 

The movie aired last night on Spike TV. While I would rather watch the theatrical cut, I was very disappointed in the show.

 

I actually enjoyed the film and felt that is was very true to Burrough's book. Unfortunately, that made it feel outdated and "been there, done that." It probably would have been best had it never been made because now no one else is going to try to adapt the property in a medium that might be more suitable such as television (the series was very episodic due to being published monthly in installments). Disney thought they had another multi-film series on their hands but they failed to realize that they were fifty years too late.

 

DOUGH!

It was just revealed in a UK tax dispute that it turns out the movie actually cost $307 million, which is far more than anybody suspected...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/csylt/2...?hq_e=el&hq_m=2972011&hq_l=20&hq_v=0bcce9fd1b

 

You could make 10 sensibly-sized movies for that sum.

 

You could make 60 low budget horror films like The Purge, Insidious, etc. and probably make a ton of profit from it.

 

Taylor Kitsch is gonna be in the new True Detective series.

I must say growing up I loved the books and really hoped the movie would have been better...

 

Great 3D flick.
Love the western pre story.
Wish they could have extended the indian scenes.