I think you mean John Carter there, right?
I wonder if this run will be as short as your average “flop”, though. I saw it this weekend in 3-D and there were almost a couple dozen people in it still. That’s a couple hundred bucks per showing which is better than most movies do in the third week considering it had 7 showings that night including 2-D.
I expected the theatre to be empty.
I’m out of the loop - what’s the theory on why it did badly? No buzz? No big stars? Saturation of big action fantasy films?
I think the person who greenlighted is long gone. That lets Disney put out negative publicity blaming him.
As long as Disney remains in business, it’s not the worst flop (Heaven’s Gate also nearly brought down a studio).
It’s clearly not going to break even, but it looks like it will do better than Mars Needs Moms overall.
They messed up the marketing, big-time. The posters sucked, the title was changed to something that doesn’t tell anybody anything, and the trailers were all desert sword-and-sandal cheese and no story.
Everyone except the subject of the page… hence my earlier post.
As a related question, why did this movie cost $350 million to make? That’s got to be creative accounting, no?
That, and who releases an action movie in March?
It didn’t cost that much to make. $100mil of that is marketing, which often isn’t included in budgets when it’s a hit, but seems to always be included when it’s considered a failure.
I also believe the $250mil that’s quoted is exaggerated, because it includes all the aborted attempts that had been made in the preceding ten years; at least three attempts were made, at my count, and each one had at least a year of pre-production costs.
Hey, some of us live in Florida, and have no friends, and like to get a good buzz on before seeing a movie, which hopefully does not entail walking in 90+ degree weather. Not that it matters with a good enough buzz
Yeah, my mind runs way ahead of my fingers.
It worked for 300 and THE MATRIX. (And cue the Lloyd Bentsen paraphrase.)
Those examples aside, as a general rule, the bigger studios usually target either summertime (now generally defined as early May through Labor Day) or November / December for their big releases. That said, we’ve now had two “big” movies released this month.
They should have used the Florida aircraft hanger where NASA shot the hoax moon landing films.
I think the biggest problem is that John Carter of Mars is a movie that nobody really had any interest in seeing.
In other words, the marketing campaign failed.
Yeah, and it’s only been out like a day.
Oh so that was you!
They also like running megablockbuster - Hunger Game stories.
Yeah and the only thing keeping me from buying a Park Avenue penthouse is the high mortgage. If it’s part of the costs of the movie, it’s part of the cost. It doesn’t matter if it’s marketing, special effects budget or catering costs.
That it did. I mean I have a vague idea that John Carter is sort of an olde tymie Tarzan in space story. But the trailers didn’t really compel me to see what looked like a two hour CGI kick-ass-a-thon.
Exactly. The director had the last say in marketing and the director thought everyone knew who John Carter was.
Fans have made far better trailers, includingthis one that makes the background clear.
Damn, that was good.
Interesting. And if the whole budget includes failed attempts to adapt the movie, it sounds like they’re just getting it all off the books now. And yes, the DVD sales and other things will be counted later. But even with all of that in mind, the movie is going to lose a bunch of money.