In a statement today Disney announced that due to the under-performance of John Carter the studio expects to make a $200m loss. Some box office analysts expected a loss of around $100-$160m, so the number is worse than expected.

The movie has taken $184m at the global box office but due to the reported $250m budget and marketing costs a total north of $600m would be needed for the movie to be profitable. There were a lot of problems here, with the budget being the main one. It didn’t need to cost that much. Then there was the marketing which failed to impress anyone until a few weeks before the film was due for release, by which time it was too late. To appeal to as many people as possible (mainly females) Disney dropped Of Mars from the title, but perhaps it would have been better to keep the sci-fi element in the title and shift the marketing to focus more on the love story between Carter and Dejah Thoris.

A March release worked well for Disney’s Alice in Wonderland back in 2010, but maybe a summer release date would have worked better for John Carter.

Some blame will have to fall at the feed of director Andrew Stanton who apparently had control over the marketing and, while it was a group effort, he failed to make a movie that lived up to his previous Pixar efforts such as Wall-E and Finding Nemo. The consensus on Rotten Tomatoes is that “While John Carter looks terrific and delivers its share of pulpy thrills, it also suffers from uneven pacing and occasionally incomprehensible plotting and characterization.” A better movie may have generated better word of mouth, but even so it would unlikely have become the event movie Disney were hoping for.

As Disney is a big studio one flop won’t impact them that badly. They have The Avengers and Pixar’s Brave set for release during the summer, and i’m sure Pirates of the Caribbean 5 will be getting the green-light soon. Hopefully lessons will be learned about spending too much and subpar marketing (although probably not).

Why do you think John Carter failed at the box office?

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This weekend director Andrew Stanton, famous for Pixar animations A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo, and Wall-E, made his live-action debut with John Carter. There’s a saying that goes something like this: first you need to learn how to walk before you can run. Andrew Stanton, while he did cut his teeth in animation, jumped straight to a 50 mile marathon with the $250 million sci-fi epic John Carter.

But he is not the only animation director that makes his live-action debut this month. Phil Lord and Chris Miller of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, the Oscar nominated 2009 animated flick from Sony, are bringing 21 Jump Street to the big screen next week.

Obviously the duo of Phil Lord and Chris Miller are taking things slower compared to Andrew Stanton and unfortunately for the latter his first live-action flick is proving to be something of a box office bomb for Disney. According to estimates, John Carter opened with $30.6 million which is in line with expectations but a lot lower then what it should be doing in order to get a pass.

Over the years there have been more than a few directors that started in animation and then successfully transitioned to live-action. The following is not a ‘top list’ of the most popular individuals but more a collection of 5 directors in no particular order who managed to turn at least one or two box office hits during their live-action ventures.

Rob Minkoff

Co-director of the highest grossing hand-drawn animated film of all time, The Lion King, Rob Minkoff successfully transitioned to live-action (though not 100%) with Stuart Little back in 1999. It was a not so little film (no pun intended, the film did cost $133 million) based on the classic children novel of the same name written by E. B. White, that blended a computer generated hero (Stuart Little) with a live-action almost everything else. The movie went on to gross $300 million worldwide and even spawned a sequel released in 2002, handled again by the same Rob Minkoff, one that made quite a bit less ($170 million worldwide). He went back to Disney and in 2003 opened the rather bad Eddie Murphy comedy, The Haunted Mansion with a worldwide total of $182.3 million. Since then he also directed The Forbidden Kingdom, somewhat successful with $128 million around the world, and Flypaper, a movie almost no one saw when it opened in just 2 theaters back in August last year.

Kevin Lima

This guy right here co-directed one of the last Disney hand-drawn animations before the computer generated tide came and swept everything away, namely Tarzan. With $448.2 million worldwide in 1999, it was a very successful film so for his live-action debut, Disney handed him the reins to 102 Dalmatians, the sequel to the live-action remake of the 1961 animated classic. With only $183.6 million worldwide, 102 Dalmatians was not as successful as 101 Dalmatians (1996) and its $320.6 million. Also, the movie was kind of bad so not the best live-action start for Kevin Lima. Fortunately for him, Enchanted, his 2nd live-action adventure, proved to be a hit with both critics and the general audience, and took $340.5 million worldwide which was a damn good rebound for Kevin Lima. Disney are actually planning an Enchanted 2 for 2014 according to IMDB. Recently Kevin Lima went back to his roots for DreamWorks Animation’s upcoming Monkeys of Mumbai.

Brad Bird

Bird directed the magnificent The Iron Giant and then joined Pixar to direct The Incredibles and co-direct Ratatouille. With such a pedigree no wonder Tom Cruise was so keen on having him helm the 4th Mission: Impossible movie. So Brad Bird made his live-action debut last year in December with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and considering that film made $686.1 million worldwide so far, I’d say this is arguably one of the best transitions from one medium to another. Truth be told, Mission: Impossible was already a household name but following Mission: Impossible 3, there were probably a few execs at Paramount scared that Brad Bird would not deliver. Looking back now, he more than delivered. Possibly up next for Brad Bird is 1906 for Warner Bros, a movie centered on the historical San Francisco earthquake of 1906 that he’s been trying to get made for a while now.

Andrew Adamson

Co-director of Shrek 1 and 2 for DreamWorks Animations, Andrew Adamson made a big leap into live-action with The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 2005. As you may remember, after Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings were adapted into very profitable movies that spanned multiple entries, every other studio wanting a piece of the cake and went after just about all the big fantasy books out there. Most of them failed miserably but Narnia was one of the exceptions. Based on the very popular first Narnia book by C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe generated $745 million worldwide so you can’t blame Disney for thinking they struck gold again.

With the second book, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian adapted in 2008, again under Andrew Adamson, they went all out and spent $225 million ($45 million more than the original). Disney also moved the release date from December to May, something they probably regret now. Anyway, Prince Caspian was a huge disappointment with just $419.6 million worldwide so the house of mouse ended up dropping the series, thus leaving Fox more than happy to continue where they left off, sans Andrew Adamson. According to IMDB, the director has now finished one of his next project, Cirque to Soleil: Worlds Away for a tentative 2012 release date while the other, Mister Pip, is still in post-production also for a 2012 release.

Tim Burton

Probably not many know this but Tim Burton actually started as an animator at Disney, working on The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron. While his career in animation wasn’t as long or prolific as the other names on here, Tim Burton is arguably the most successful director to make the jump to live-action with big hits like Batman ($411.3 million worldwide), Batman Returns ($266.8 million), Sleepy Hollow ($206.1 million), Planet of the Apes (2001, $362.2 million), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ($475 million) and Alice in Wonderland (2010, $1,024.3 million). Then there are other great films he made, maybe not as popular but still noteworthy, titles like Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Big Fish, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street or his return to stop-motion animation, Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. For 2012 he has two films in post-production, Dark Shadows based on the popular 60′s TV show, and stop-motion animated flick Frankenweenie based on a live-action short he directed in 1984.

So who do you think made the smoothest transition from animation to live-action? Or who you like best? Also, if I missed someone feel free to mention him and contribute to this post!

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Considered one of the most influential science fiction novels of all time, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “A Princess of Mars” opened readers’ imaginations to interplanetary heroism, romance, action, adventure, and more. From all accounts, it has the best elements of any great piece of pulp fiction. Almost 100 years after the novel’s release, the long-awaited film adaptation of this story exchanges pulp for stoicism and loses all of its fun in the process.

The biggest problem with Carter isn’t the poor acting, bad dialogue, or bland storytelling. It’s the tone with which director Andrew Stanton, who also co-wrote the screenplay, chose to bestow on the movie, and the way he (or Disney, the studio responsible) attempted to conform the film to hit every quadrant. John Carter was once called John Carter of Mars, a title much more evocative of the type of movie this should have aspired to: daring, charming, and a bit ridiculous, like an Errol Flynn space opera. But the studio decided that dropping the “of Mars” would get more females into the theater and avoid conjuring memories of their colossal 2011 financial failure Mars Needs Moms. This marketing ploy made very little sense to me, especially considering that they didn’t change the rest of their strategy to fit their perceived new goals; what I mean is, every commercial and TV spot aired featured nine foot tall aliens with four arms and Taylor Kitsch leaping around a red planet like a frog with ‘roid rage. Not exactly the best way to distance themselves from the Mars they so desperately wanted to leave behind in the title. And did you know that the film actually opens with Carter as a Confederate soldier on Earth during the Civil War and he’s suddenly transported to Mars? If you knew that, I bet you didn’t learn it from the trailers; again, focusing on that plot point would have been a nice way to shed that studio fear of Martian haze.

But let’s forget the advertising, shall we? A film should always be judged on its own, independently of what a marketing team decides is the best way to sell it. There have been plenty of terrible trailers for great movies (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Lucky Number Slevin come to mind), so let’s leave the marketing in our collective rear-view and move back to the movie itself.

This is Andrew Stanton’s first live action feature film (he previously directed Finding Nemo and WALL*E for Pixar), and though the source material he’s working from came way before and absolutely inspired Star Wars, Avatar, and a lot of other sci-fi properties that we’re familiar with today, the burden falls on him as a director to give us something new with a $200 million dollar blockbuster. It’s his responsibility to recognize that we’ve seen action sequences like the ones written in “A Princess of Mars” before, and it’s up to him to do whatever it takes – even if that mean deviating slightly from the source material – to give audiences something that, if it doesn’t take our breath away, at the very least provides an emotional connection to the characters and perhaps some coherent action while avoiding the most asinine of cliches. Unfortunately, we don’t get any of those things in John Carter.

What we do get, instead of pulpy entertainment, is a super serious narrative of the reluctant hero with a past. It’s more Batman Begins than Flash Gordon. There’s a scene in which Carter is on the run from a horde of evil aliens, and he stops and turns to face them. Intercut with flashbacks of his dead wife, Carter leaps into the middle of hundreds of enemies, stands in one place, and flails his sword wildly, slashing anything in his path and bellowing in slow motion while Michael Giacchino’s score demands we take this as a somber moment. Carter just stands there, feet planted, bodies piling up around him as the creatures stupidly attack him one at a time and continue to jump at a man who has slaughtered hundreds of their friends in front of them with very little effort. It’s blockbuster stupidity at its most depressing, removing the potential fun from the story and replacing it with self-serious moments that earned unintentional laughter in my theater.

The story is ripe for adventure in all the right places, but never lives up to its thrilling potential. A soldier is mysteriously transported to Mars (called Barsoom by the natives), basically gaining superpowers as soon as he arrives; because of the differences in gravity, he can leap hundreds of feet at a time and has super strength. But the movie is wildly inconsistent with its rules, contradicting itself every few minutes and resulting in a muddled mess that has some passable effects, but no heart whatsoever. The soulless Taylor Kitsch brings little to the wayward warrior, delivering poorly written lines with no gusto. One minute he kills someone with a single blow, the next he’s struggling to pull a chain from a wall. There’s no continuity with the “powers,” and no danger involved with them, either. Carter barely bleeds throughout the whole film, a wimpier version of Han Solo who ironically inspired the creation of Han Solo. If you’re going to use that archetype, there’s gotta be something more going on underneath the surface (see: Sawyer, “LOST”).

Lynn Collins is gorgeous as Dejah Thoris, but she’s saddled with such a thankless character that it was hard to take her seriously. You may see the occasional supporter come out and defend her character as being badass, but try as the filmmakers might (and they didn’t try very hard), she’s still ultimately just a damsel in distress who relies on Carter to save her from being married to the bad guy. Mark Strong’s talent is totally wasted as the leader of some sort of galactic League of Shadows whose idea of killing time involves wandering from planet to planet, building them up, and orchestrating their downfalls from within. This group’s motivations were never clearly defined, and for a band of eternal creatures who supposedly organize the death of planets all the time, they’re really bad at it. Willem Dafoe yammers his way through a motion-captured performance as a character so blase I could barely pay attention to what he was saying without falling asleep.

The coolest part of the movie is its ending, which has a neat little twist I’ll admit I didn’t see coming. But that’s the only positive thing I can say about the script, which is otherwise full of eye-rolling moments, dumbed-down dialogue, and idiotic one-liners played for the broadest possible laughs. (Soon after Carter wakes up on Barsoom, he yells, “Where on Earth am I?!” He later introduces himsefl to Dafoe’s alien as “John Carter from Virginia,” and for the rest of the movie, they call him “Virginia.” See what I mean?) Michael Giacchino’s score takes its cues from the love theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and while some of the special effects were cool (cities, ships, some design elements), the weight of Carter jumping around never felt right. None of the storylines hit me on an emotional level, and I was never invested in what happened to anyone. There are two warring nations on Barsoom, and they live in seemingly the only two cities on the entire planet. Couldn’t they just draw a line down the middle and each take half?

I could go on about the nonsensical elements of this movie (why do inhabitants of Barsoom fly around on spaceships and shoot laser beams at each other, yet still use metal swords for close combat fighting?), but I’ll digress and end by saying that for me, this movie is a complete failure. The only thing that’s epic about John Carter is how much of a disaster it is. Until next time…

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Over recent months the trailers for John Carter have improved, but you know the marketing team at Disney need a re-think when a roughly cut fan trailer does a better job at selling the film than anything they’ve put out.

We’re less than two weeks away from John Carter hitting on March 9th, and Disney has released a new extended preview online. The first part is a scene featuring the White Apes (which I deliberately haven’t watched), and the second part contains a sizzle reel which has finally convinced me that John Carter needs to be seen. Why didn’t Disney release this earlier?

The sizzle reel begins at 2:40:

From Academy Award(R)-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton comes “John Carter”–a sweeping action-adventure set on the mysterious and exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars). “John Carter” is based on a classic novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose highly imaginative adventures served as inspiration for many filmmakers, both past and present.

The film tells the story of war-weary, former military captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is inexplicably transported to Mars where he becomes reluctantly embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the captivating Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins). In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter rediscovers his humanity when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands.

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Back in May Disney decided to change the title of John Carter of Mars to simply John Carter, removing the cool and interesting part of the title in the process. Soon after Mark Strong, who plays Matai Shang in the film, said the change was because “in the beginning he’s John Carter, but by the end of the first film, he’s John Carter of Mars; so he’s earned that title.”

Strong’s reasoning made some sense, and as Disney is hoping for sequels they can add ‘of Mars’ should they happen. However, director Andrew Stanton has now revealed the real reason for the change was mainly down to marketing.

From Bleeding Cool:

“Here’s the real truth of it. I’d already changed it from ‘A Princess Of Mars’ to ‘John Carter Of Mars’. I don’t like to get fixated on it, but I changed ‘Princess Of Mars’… because not a single boy would go. And then the other truth is, no girl would go to see ‘John Carter Of Mars’. So I said, “I don’t won’t to do anything out of fear, I hate doing things out of fear, but I can’t ignore that truth.

“All the time we were making this big character story which just so happens to be in this big, spectacular new environment. But it’s not about the spectacle, it’s about the investment. I thought, I’ve really worked hard to make all of this an origin story. It’s about a guy becoming John Carter. So I’m not misrepresenting what this movie is, it’s ‘John Carter’. ’Mars’ is going to stick on any other film in the series. But by then, it won’t have a stigma to it.”

Studios often change titles after doing some marketing research, and it just so happens the males in the focus group didn’t like princesses and the females weren’t fond of planets. Disney’s Tangled was originally called Rapunzel but they thought it would discouraged young boys from seeing the film, so they changed the title and used the male character more in the marketing. Tangled ended up making nearly $600m worldwide, so it obviously worked. We’ll have to see if John Carter has similar success when it hits in March.

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The teaser trailer for Disney’s John Carter was released back in July and introduced us to the set-up, but offered little action or anything to get too excited about.

Now the studio has released the second full length trailer, and we finally get to see where some of the $200+ million budget went. It also looks pretty good.

Watch below:

From Academy Award(R)-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton comes “John Carter”–a sweeping action-adventure set on the mysterious and exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars). “John Carter” is based on a classic novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose highly imaginative adventures served as inspiration for many filmmakers, both past and present. The film tells the story of war-weary, former military captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is inexplicably transported to Mars where he becomes reluctantly embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the captivating Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins). In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter rediscovers his humanity when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands.

John Carter will be released March 2012.

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Filming on Disney’s John Carter of Mars has been under-way since the beginning of the year, and now they have finally set a June 8, 2012 release date for their sci-fi epic.

John Carter of Mars will be director Andrew Stanton’s first big live-action movie after working on Finding Nemo and Wall-E. The cast includes Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins (Gambit and Kayla from X-Men Origins: Wolverine), Thomas Haden Church who played Sandman in Spider-Man 3, Mark Strong, Dominic West, James Purefoy and Samantha Morton. Willem Dafoe will also be playing a 10-foot alien with four arms called Tars Tarkas.

Here is the synopsis:

Carter is an American Civil War veteran who goes to sleep in a cave after being chased by Apache Indians and wakes up on Mars, here called Barsoom. Formerly an Earthlike world, it became less hospitable to life due to its advanced age: as the oceans evaporated, and the atmosphere thinned, the planet devolved into partial barbarism with the inhabitants hardened and warlike, fighting one another to survive. Barsoomians distribute scarce water supplies via a worldwide system of canals, controlled by quarreling city-states. The Martian atmosphere is maintained by a power plant. Carter rescues a humanoid Red Martian princess, Dejah Thoris, from the belligerent four-armed Green Martians, whose respect he gains for his superior strength and fighting ability. He enlists the Green Martians’ assistance in winning a civil war, and saves Mars from destruction when its atmosphere plant malfunctions.

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While on the rounds promoting Daybreakers Willem Dafoe revealed to io9 that he will be heading to London next week to begin work on John Carter of Mars. Dafoe will be playing a 10-foot alien with four arms called Tars Tarkas.

What was the appeal in doing John Carter of Mars?

Andrew Stanton, the material, the idea that I’m going to play a 10-foot Martian Warrior. I live very much in the independent cinema world, which is great and that’s where we find a lot of great filmmakers and sometimes more freedom to make personal films. But the flip side of that is, sometimes there isn’t a lot of protection or care. There may be an emotional rigor, but sometimes you don’t have the the technical stuff to work with. You can have lousy lighting [and] no time to prepare properly. You are very vulnerable.

When someone asks you to make a movie directed by Andrew Stanton, with Disney behind, a big tent-pole movie… I know from making Finding Nemo how these Pixar guys work. They’re very thorough , they’re very rigorous, they really get it. It’s a real pleasure because you get so protected because they are so well researched. And you get so much help trying to make something. I think I got excited about that. I like to go back and forth, but it was time to do a big movie again.

Are you going to have to wear two extra prosthetic arms?

I’m not telling. And you know what, I can’t talk that much about it, because I don’t know yet. We don’t even start shooting next week it’s part of prep, I go to London and we do the things that we need to do to know how to start this project… I think officially production starts the 18th.

John Carter of Mars will be director Andrew Stanton’s first big live-action movie after working on Finding Nemo and Wall-E. As well as Dafoe, the cast includes Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins (Gambit and Kayla from X-Men Origins: Wolverine), Thomas Haden Church who played Sandman in Spider-Man 3, Mark Strong who we recently saw in Sherlock Holmes, Dominic West, James Purefoy and Samantha Morton.

Carter is an American Civil War veteran who goes to sleep in a cave after being chased by Apache Indians and wakes up on Mars, here called Barsoom. Formerly an Earthlike world, it became less hospitable to life due to its advanced age: as the oceans evaporated, and the atmosphere thinned, the planet devolved into partial barbarism with the inhabitants hardened and warlike, fighting one another to survive. Barsoomians distribute scarce water supplies via a worldwide system of canals, controlled by quarreling city-states. The Martian atmosphere is maintained by a power plant. Carter rescues a humanoid Red Martian princess, Dejah Thoris, from the belligerent four-armed Green Martians, whose respect he gains for his superior strength and fighting ability. He enlists the Green Martians’ assistance in winning a civil war, and saves Mars from destruction when its atmosphere plant malfunctions.

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Taylor Kitsch, who played Gambit in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and Lynn Collins, who played Wolverine’s female, have joined Disney’s John Carter of Mars. All we need now is Liev Schreiber and Will.I.Am and we have a Wolverine spin-off set in space!

From The Hollywood Reporter:

Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins will star in “John Carter of Mars,” the adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs book series that Andrew Stanton is directing for Disney.

The movie is a big step for Stanton — who as one of Pixar’s top creators directed the company’s animated films “Finding Nemo” and “WALL-E” but will now helm his first live-action feature — and Disney, which hopes the big-budget production will launch a franchise on the scale of “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

“Carter” centers on a civil war veteran who finds himself mysteriously transported to Mars, where his involvement with warring races of the dying planet force him to rediscover his humanity.

I wonder if their involvement in X-Men Origins: Wolverine helped them get the roles, with one of them recommending the other to the director and producers. Either way this could end up rather entertaining, especially since they have Andrew Stanton who has worked magic at Pixar for years. However, will he be able to work the same magic in a live action environment?

In other John Carter news Thomas Haden Church, who played Sandman in Spider-Man 3, told Reel Talk that he too has joined the cast. The way things are going I wouldn’t be surprised if they hire an actor who appeared in The Dark Knight and another from Iron Man. Get all the superhero bases covered.

Filming will begin at the beginning of 2010, with the release date currently set for 2012. This gives them plently of time to get it right (and possibly change the name to something a little cooler).

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