There was a big shake up today at Disney, Rich Ross, now former chairman of Walt Disney Studios, has apparently stepped down. Deadline reports he was actually fired while his statement, followed by Disney chairman Bob Iger’s, says otherwise. After the box office bust that was John Carter, I think fired, sacked, laid off or whatever you want to call it, make more sense here.

This is what he had to say to the rest of the staff left behind:

For the last 15 years, I have had the opportunity to work with incredibly talented people on behalf of the world’s best loved brand. During that time, we’ve told some amazing stories around the world, created successful TV programming, movies, and franchises that generated new opportunities for the company in the process.

I’ve always said our success is created and driven by our people – whom I consider to be the absolute best in the business. But, the best people need to be in the right jobs, in roles they are passionate about, doing work that leverages the full range of their abilities. It’s one of the leadership lessons I’ve learned during my career, and it’s something I’ve been giving a great deal of thought to as I look at the challenges and opportunities ahead.

I believe in this extraordinary Walt Disney Studios team, and I believe in our strong slate of films and our ability to make and market them better than anyone else. But, I no longer believe the Chairman role is the right professional fit for me. For that reason, I have made the very difficult decision to step down as Chairman of The Walt Disney Studios, effective today.

It has been my honor to work with such incredible teams – at Disney Channels Worldwide and The Walt Disney Studios and the many other Disney businesses I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with. I know I leave the Studios in good hands and, even on separate paths, I am confident we are all destined for continued success.

-Rich

Bob Iger, CEO of Walt Disney co. had this to say:

For more than a decade, Rich Ross’s creative instincts, business acumen and personal integrity have driven results in key businesses for Disney, redefining success in kids and family entertainment and launching franchises that generate value across our entire company. His vision and leadership opened doors for Disney around the world, making our brand part of daily life for millions of people. I appreciate his countless contributions throughout his entire career at Disney, and expect he will have tremendous success in whatever he chooses to do next.

Rich Ross has been working at Disney since 1996, first starting on the Disney Channel. In October 2009 he was named chairman of The Walt Disney Studios. Under his reign Disney released 3 of the top 10 highest grossing films ever worldwide, those being Alice in Wonderland (2010, $1,024 million), Toy Story 3 (2010, $1,063 million) and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011, $1,043 million). There were also less than stellar performers like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010, $335.2 million on a $200 million budget), The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010, $215.3 million worldwide, $150 million budget) and John Carter (2012, $269.4 million worldwide, $250 million budget), the film that’s probably to blame for Ross’ departure.

Ultimately I think this is a good thing, something needed to change at Disney and hopefully Rich Ross’ successor, whoever that ends up being, will do a better job. Either way this won’t have an effect on the imminent release of The Avengers, so don’t worry guys. However it will have a huge effect on the future projects that end up getting a green light at the house of mouse.

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“The Wind in the Willows” was a children’s book published in 1908, and Walt Disney took characters that appeared in that book and created an animated movie called The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad back in 1949. Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride is a theme park ride based on that film that has been operational since Disneyland opened its doors in 1955. Now Disney wants to create a feature length film out of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. We’re stuck in an adaptation vortex!

Deadline has the story, but no writers are attached at this point. Commercial helmer Pete Candeland is set to direct. For those of you who have never been to Disneyland, riders cruise along with Mr. Toad, who joyrides through a town in a car, gets hit by a train, and you end up in hell before being spit out back into the area where you get off the ride. (All of that is true, by the way – if you want to watch a video of someone going on the ride, check it out here.)

Anybody out there familiar with Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride? Interested in seeing a(nother) movie about it?

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The Blind Side director John Lee Hancock has a new movie in the works, and it’s got an interesting twist. It’s called Saving Mr. Banks, and it’s about how Walt Disney himself obtained the rights to Mary Poppins from that book’s author, P.L. Travers. It’s a crazy story because Disney courted Travers for the rights to turn her book into a movie for 14 years before she finally gave in. The script was recently on the Black List as one of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood, and now Deadline is reporting that Tom Hanks is in talks to play the role of Walt Disney in the film.

Kelly Marcel wrote the script, which has attracted all kinds of big names so far. Hanks was rumored to be interested a few months back, but now those conversations are getting a bit more serious. Meryl Streep was also eyeing the female lead of P.L. Travers, but now Disney is in discussions with Emma Thompson to play that role. Hanks and Thompson are perhaps two of the most beloved actors working in the industry today, so I think most movie fans would consider it a joy to watch them work together.

In real life, Travers apparently despised the animated sequences in Mary Poppins so much that she refused to work with Disney again on any other projects, but those same sequences are arguably what made that film so successful upon its release back in 1964.

This story could be considered a bit too “insidery” for the general public, but with such heavy hitters involved, I’m sure they won’t have any trouble bringing people in to see this story in theaters. What do you think about the idea of Tom Hanks playing Walt Disney?

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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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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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About a month ago we learned that Maleficent, the alternate perspective Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, will be Angelina Jolie’s next film. Disney has hired Robert Stromberg to direct the movie, and now Twitch reports that they may have found their Princess Aurora in Super 8 star Elle Fanning.

There’s no further information in the report, so we’re left to speculate: is Sleeping Beauty going to be a punk kid in this version, painting Maleficent in a more positive light? Or is the powerful sorceress going to stay evil, and the film will be told from her perspective anyway? Only time will tell, but I think Fanning is as solid a choice as any for a young actress to face off against one of the most famous women in the world. Thoughts?

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The Lion King 3D has been a huge success for Disney, making over $90 million since its re-release in September (it originally had a 2 week run but was still making money 6 weeks later). Disney announced more 3D re-releases of their classics would be coming soon, and a trailer for the next one, Beauty and the Beast, has appeared online.

Watch below:

Beauty and the Beast was originally released in 1991 and centers around a prince who is transformed into a Beast and a young woman named Belle whom he imprisons in his castle. It made $380 million at the worldwide box office and was the first ever animated film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. In total it picked up 6 nominations (most in the music category) and it ended up winning Best Original Score and Best Original Song.

Beauty and the Beast 3D will be released January 13, 2012.

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With The Lone Ranger budget trimmed and back on track Disney, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and director Gore Verbinski are now aiming to begin filming in February with Armie Hammer as the title character and Johnny Depp as the Ranger’s Native American companion Tonto.

In a new interview Bruckheimer revealed it was “a shock” when Disney halted production back in August, but the team have now reduced the budget to $215m from $260m with most scenes left intact, so as to compete with the “fierce” competition.

From THR:

How did you do it?
…we bunched the sequences that were big together, and for the smaller scenes [we] laid off the extras, the effects people, the makeup people. It costs an enormous amount with 150 extras on the set. It’s not the extras, it’s the people that support the extras. You’re still carrying all the wardrobe, makeup and hair people. We bunched together scenes with Tonto and the Lone Ranger, so we had a much smaller crew. We saved about $10 million just by doing that.

Then we looked for the best break in tax incentives. We found that Louisiana gave us a better tax incentive than New Mexico — that was another $8 million. We’re still shooting in New Mexico, and we might [also] go to Louisiana.

Did you have to lose sequences from the script? There was talk that some train sequences were cut back.
We cut a sequence involving a coyote attack — supernatural coyotes — and a small animated segment. The train [scenes] are intact. We trimmed it a little bit. Gore made some sacrifices creatively, but nothing that would hurt the film.

Disney would have much preferred us cutting stuff out of the script. But the competition is fierce. You can’t compete with The Hobbit, you can’t compete with Transformers if you do that. The audience will stay home.

Because you missed your original start date, how do you feel about Disney moving the release from December 2012 to May 31, 2013?
It’s a better date. Before, we were up against The Hobbit and World War Z. Now we’re a week after Fast and Furious and a couple weeks before Superman. The competition is not as bad. There are a lot of movies jammed in at Christmas. In the summer, you have a longer run. You’re cut off after the first of the year on a Christmas release.

As well as Depp and Hammer, The Lone Ranger will also feature Ruth Wilson, Dwight Yoakam, Helena Bonham Carter, James Badge Dale and Barry Pepper.

Bruckheimer also said they were at “the outline phase” with Pirates of the Caribbean 5, but “decided we could do better” with the script, so re-writes will likely take place before it moves forward. I felt the script for On Stranger Tides was pretty weak, so improving the next film (which is coming whether we like it or not) will be better for everyone.

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Harry Potter, Jaws, Jurassic Park and King Kong have all made the leap from the big screen to entertaining tourists as theme park attractions, and it was just announced that Avatar will be solidifying itself in popular culture by having an attraction built at Disney Parks.

From the Disney Parks blog:

James and his producing partner Jon Landau and their team at Lightstorm Entertainment will serve as creative consultants on the project and will work side-by-side with our Walt Disney Imagineers as we dream up experiences that will take our guests deep into worlds of AVATAR like never before. There are also two sequels to the record setting first film in the works, which will offer more fascinating stories, characters and locations to explore in the AVATAR universe. Disney’s Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort is planned as the site of the first AVATAR-themed land with construction expected to begin by 2013.

We believe Disney’s Animal Kingdom is a great fit for this project because it was created to give guests the opportunity to experience the worlds of animals and nature – real and mythical – in new ways. Disney’s Animal Kingdom also celebrates adventure, living in harmony with nature and environmental stewardship – themes that are deeply rooted in the story of AVATAR.

James Cameron and 20th Century Fox have a global franchise with Avatar, so the arrival of merchandise, video-games and theme parks is just another way to keeping the money rolling in. An Avatar attraction is a good idea given its popularity and the world Cameron has created, but construction won’t begin until 2013 so tourists won’t be bonding with mechanical Mountain Banshee’s for a few years yet.

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With Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides crossing the $1 billion mark over the weekend the likelihood of Disney moving forward with Pirates of the Caribbean 5 was more certain than ever, however the studio doesn’t have a franchise if there’s no Captain Jack Sparrow.

Luckily for them, Johnny Depp is apparently close to a deal to return for the fifth time.

From The Wrap:

Johnny Depp is close to signing a deal to star in a fifth “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie, an individual close to the negotiations told TheWrap.

In May, producer Jerry Bruckheimer said he was working on a fifth “Pirates” script — and that he wouldn’t make the movie without Depp.

“Hopefully, if this one does well, (Depp) will want to come back and play the character again,” Bruckheimer told the L.A. Times. “But it’s going to depend on the screenplay. It always does. He’s maniacal about not wanting to disappoint his audience.”

Apparently, Depp likes what he sees. He’s negotiating for the movie.

Earlier this year Depp said whether he returns for another film “boils down to story, script and filmmaker” and said ““we should hold off for a bit. They should be special, just like they are special to me.”

This suggests that even if Depp signs for 5, which is likely, he won’t want to start shooting any time soon. Terry Rossio, who has co-written all of the Pirates films with his writing partner Ted Elliott, was hired to write the script back in January, so Pirates of the Caribbean 5 will be ready to go whenever Depp is.

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