Forbes reports the movie made back its production budget. It’s still a loss when you consider the advertising and distribution, but it’s not a disaster.
Also, DVD preorders are strong.
REALLY big mistake on the title of the film.
I think if they’d called it: John Carter of Mars or possibly Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars that that alone would have brought in 50% more ticket sales.
But “John Carter”? what kind of a title is that? Considering the original book is 60 or 70 years old and no one under 40 (and not that many over 40) have ever heard of him?
That article is weird in that it reports that the movie has grossed its production budget and then says it still hasn’t made a profit because of marketing costs.
It still hasn’t made a budget because the studio only gets about half (more on domestic, generally less on international) of the gross.
Ignoring P&A, it is still only halfway to earning its production budget in dollars actually seen by Disney.
I don’t think you can blame the trailers entirely. The movie didn’t really generate any positive buzz from those who saw it on opening weekend. I know some people here liked it. But I don’t think the movie was generally well received by those that did see it.
I don’t know, most of the reviews of the movie I saw were positive. The negative reviews mostly seemed to be reviews of the movie’s budget, not of the movie itself.
That was indeed an excellent trailer but I can’t resist a nitpick:
[QUOTE=Trailer]
In 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs gave us the gift of modern science fiction.
[/QUOTE]
Sorry, guys, that gift had already been given by HG Wells.
An interesting point. Wells (and also Jules Verne) did found science fiction in two streams, social criticism (Wells) and hard SF (Verne).
However, Burroughs was slightly different; his work was space opera. It had no point about society, nor did it stick with scientific fact. I’d have to check, but there were probably space opera authors before Burroughs, though they’ve been forgotten, and Burroughs probably would have been if it weren’t for Tarzan.
But since most modern (filmed) science fiction is space opera, Burroughs has a better claim than Wells or Verne.
I saw the movie last night, and I liked it. The artwork and scenery were beautiful, the CGI Tharks looked very real, and the 3D seemed very good. The supporting cast was solid even though the leads were forgettable. (Kitsch looked too young for the part from the beginning, and when he ages 10 years looking for the medallion it really got silly.) I wish Dominic West had had more to do, but when you have him, Dafoe and even Bryan Cranston for a couple of minutes, that’s a good cast. They handled the old-fashioned pulpiness well - we’re told Mars has breathable air and water and life, Carter drinks some stuff and understands Martian language, and we accept it for the adventure and that’s fine. There were certainly places where the movie got bogged down a little bit in the Martian place names and royal titles - you can only hear “Jeddak of Zodanga” so many times before the goofiness becomes unbearable - but it was exciting enough to keep the story going from point to point. I thought the Martians were perhaps being stupid for swordfighting with what seemed like very little armor, but then I saw Dejah’s wedding dress and thought “These noble people have so much to teach us.”
It has a 7.0 rating (out of 10) from viewers on IMDb. That’s after 29,392 votes. That is a very fine fan rating.
Not good enough for the head of the studio, though: Disney chairman Rich Ross resigns after 'John Carter' fiasco - Apr. 20, 2012
So it turns out John Carter is not such a bomb after all.
Including foreign box office, it has now brought in $283 million (on a budget of $250 million). Not a great return, but not the bomb it has been made out to be.