Disney claims that John Carter is set to lose 200 million bucks.

[Stilkon]

MovieBob said on Episode 3 of Media Sandwich that the general rule is that a movie must gross three times its production cost to break even, this being attributed to sketchy Hollywood accounting.

That being said, John Carter wasn't extraordinarily bad. A little nonsensical at most.

 

[VincentR]

I agree with Fawxy. I had never heard of the series - in fact, it wasn't until my... uh... very old, father asked me if I'd like to go see it with him that I decided to go read up on the series. The trailer(s) that I saw were also REALLY stupid; in fact, I immediately thought it was some kind of outrageous parody of Avatar/Dances with Wolves. I think the trailer actually mentioned Avatar at some point - I assume in a voice-over commentary or something.

Yeah, the marketing could have been a bit less... completely worthless. Pointing out that this is, pretty much, the ORIGINAL science fiction series in the commercials would have made me far more interested than some guy jumping 60 feet into the air for apparently no logical reason.

 

[tzimize]

Hell. I enjoyed the movie. It wasnt oscar material by any means, but it was a decent adventure, with cool action and decent characters. Swell popcorn material.

 

[Anachronism]

It had a stupid name. It should have been called "John Carter of Mars", thereby giving people an actual explanation as to what the fuck's going on in the movie.

Precisely. When you hear "John Carter of Mars", you think, "pulpy, B-science fiction thrills; this could be fun!" When you hear "John Carter", you think "that's a name". Given that the pulp nature of it is a pretty central part of this film's appeal, you'd think they'd have the sense to make the title reflect that. When you leave that out, a large part of the film's target audience aren't going to show up because they won't know what the film's about.

 

[SciFan]

I think the loss is a projected loss based on opening numbers only. Based on the marketing and some of the opening competition it's no wonder. Or possibly Disney thought opening numbers were a bit low and want to hype a loss for tax purposes??

There are a lot of action and Sci-fans out there and I believe if a few more people give this movie a try and word spreads, Disney will recoup it's money. I think just having Disney in the title of a movie of this type is a detriment....It's not a children's movie.

If you can go to the movies and get 2 hours of decent entertainment which this movie does, the numbers should turn around...Give it a chance it was pretty good.

 

[Tanis]

I just wonder who the hell approved of the final script.

HEY, I GOT AN IDEA!
Lets take almost EVERYTHING that made the books good and replace it with generic sci-fi shit you'd expect from a SyFy channel original movie!

THEN we'll make two villains, but not really villains, so we can REAP the lore!

EPIC MONEY IS COMING OUR WAY!

 

[ICantBelieveItGoesBoom]

I was going to ask what John Carter exactly was but I guess that explains a lot of why It's bombing, I don't think I've seen any marketing for it.

 

[evilneko]

It had a stupid name. It should have been called "John Carter of Mars", thereby giving people an actual explanation as to what the fuck's going on in the movie.

Precisely. When you hear "John Carter of Mars", you think, "pulpy, B-science fiction thrills; this could be fun!" When you hear "John Carter", you think "that's a name". Given that the pulp nature of it is a pretty central part of this film's appeal, you'd think they'd have the sense to make the title reflect that. When you leave that out, a large part of the film's target audience aren't going to show up because they won't know what the film's about.

I'd never even heard of John Carter of Mars until Movie Bob's review.

 

[Idon'tcareanymore]

This is why a John Carter movie has never been done before. IT. DOES. NOT. WORK.

 

[SciFan]

I never read the original ER Burroughs stories....
I still liked the movie

 

[likalaruku]

For me, Disney has been on a roller coaster of fail ever since the 60s ended, & that was 13 years before I was born.