There are projects that get stuck in Hollywood and end up completely canceled or in the dreaded development hell. Some are resumed later in a version more or less similar to the one that was launched at the time. That is what happened in the case of ‘John Carter’, an adaptation of a story by Edgar Rice Burroughs First published in 2012 and whose first attempt to make the leap to the big screen dates back to 1931.
Many attempts that did not take off
The initial plan was to make an animated film and several scenes were made using rotoscoping, but a test run between exhibitors was a resounding failure and was shelved. Already in the 50s it was the legendary ray harryhausen who showed interest in making the film, but it wasn’t until the ’80s that there was real movement again. However, the project, which was born partly out of an attempt to find a competitor for Star Wars, ended up collapsing, thus leaving us without a film that was going to be directed by john mctiernan and starring Tom Cruise.
Already at the beginning of the 21st century, it was robert rodriguez who was about to make the film, but ended up getting off the boat and the project was finally left in the hands of Jon Favreau. However, paramount he let the rights he had over the novel expire -and thus Favreau was free to sign for Marvel and make ‘Iron Man’-, a movement that Disney took the opportunity to get hold of them again, since the director Andrew Stanton he was looking forward to this being his first live action film.
Let’s remember that Stanton was then known for being one of the strong men at Pixar, where he had signed ‘Finding Nemo’ and ‘Wall-E’. Despite Disney’s doubts, managed to convince them to finance an ambitious blockbuster called to be the beginning of a trilogy in the Star Wars line. Yes indeed, the big idea that Stanton used to sell it was to say that it was going to be Indiana Jones on Mars.
However, it was clear that Disney saw the possibility of finding a new Star Wars here, as Burroughs’s work was one of the most important inspirations for George Lucassince he initially wanted to adapt ‘Flash Gordon’ and when he was unable to do so, he inquired further and made it clear that ‘Princess of Mars’ was one of the main references used by alex raymond.
Chronicle of an announced disaster
Stanton decided to do without big stars in his cast and also signed taylor kitsch, an actor on the rise at that time thanks to the television ‘Friday Night Lights’, to give life to the great protagonist of the show. At Disney they were not entirely convinced with this and other decisions in a film whose budget soared to over 260 million dollars, but the real problems came when filming, including reshoots, was already completed.
Not a few have pointed out that the ‘John Carter’ marketing campaign was a real disaster. The quarrels even came with the title itself, since initially it was going to be ‘John Carter from Mars’, but the new marketing president of the studio forced to eliminate “from Mars” because she considered it poison for the box office. Your arguments? The failures of ‘Mission to Mars’, ‘Red Planet’ and, above all, ‘Mars needs mothers’. Of course, he conveniently omitted when justifying his decision that all of them had been poorly received by critics.
Of course, the trouble with the title came from before, since Stanton did not even want to hear about keeping the original ‘Princess of Mars’ because then “not a single boy would go to see her“However, the first sign that something was really wrong was when it came time to release the first trailer for the film, something to which he did not hesitate to allude as soon as it became clear that ‘John Carter’ was going to be a flop.
There, the concession that Disney had made in relation to the fact that Stanton had a lot of freedom to compose the advances to his liking, a decision that ended up being disastrous, was key. For the time being, Stanton decided dispense with any mention of his previous successes at Pixar or even in the importance of Burroughs’ work and its influence on Star Wars.
Instead, Stanton included only scenes from the film, skipping the big action scenes or flashier moments from the film. In other words, doing their job very poorly when it comes to creating the need in the public to see the film. That feeling carried over into later trailers, and one Disney executive sums it up like this: “For him, it was the most important science fiction movie in history.“I thought that this was enough to conquer the public. Even Kitsch acknowledged days before the premiere on the promotional campaign that”There are things that I would have done differently“.
‘John Carter’ was doomed to theaters, since the studies carried out to find out the interest of the public towards it indicated that the more people knew of its existence, the fewer viewers wanted to see it. It was clear that Disney had already lost interest in her by then and simply wanted to get rid of her as soon as possible, because they were also already in negotiations with George Lucas to buy Lucasfilm and make their own Star Wars movies, something that would take place in just a few months. after. She no longer needed a possible successor who was mortally wounded.
what a fiasco
Once it reached theaters, various explanations were sought to explain why it did not connect with the public beyond that horrendous promotional campaign, one of the main ones that most of what it offered was already in ‘Star Wars’, but the important thing is that it crashed with a bang in the United States, where it barely earned 30 million dollars its first weekend and 73 million in total. An unprecedented disaster.
It fared much better in the rest of the world, where it added an additional 211 million, leaving its worldwide collection at 284 million. The problem is that by then it was already said that I needed to do 700 for it to start making sense to make the sequel. Instead of that, ‘John Carter’ generated losses estimated at 200 million, the biggest failure in the entire history of Disney.
The truth is that the criticism was not so hard on her and that from time to time someone comes up claiming ‘John Carter’, but it is evident that Disney prefers to forget about his existence, while Stanton returned to Pixar and 11 years had to pass until another film began to be shot in real image. It’s titled ‘In the Blink of an Eye’, part of a completely original story and hopefully you’ll have more luck here.
In Espinof | The 34 Best Sci-Fi Movies of All Time