There are projects that get stuck in Hollywood and end up completely cancelled, or blocked in the dreaded “development hell“. Some are later taken up again 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’ (2012), an adaptation of a saga of Edgar Rice Burroughs published for the first time in 1912 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 do an animated film and several scenes were made through the use of rotoscoping, but a test pass among the 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 1980s that there was real movement again. However, the project, which was born in part out of an attempt to find a competitor to Star Wars, ended up collapsing, leaving us without a film that was 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 in the hands of Jon Favreau. However, Paramount he let the rights he had on the novel expire (and thus Favreau was free to sign for Marvel and make ‘Iron Man’), a move that disney took advantage of the opportunity to get them back, since the director Andrew Stanton I was really looking forward to that being his first live action film.
Let’s remember that Stanton was then known for being one of the big names at Pixar, where he had signed ‘Finding Nemo’ and ‘Wall-E’. Despite Disney’s doubts, He managed to convince them to finance an ambitious blockbuster that was to be the beginning of a trilogy along the lines of Star Wars.. Yes indeed, The great idea that Stanton used to sell it was to say that he was going to be Indiana Jones on Mars.
However, it was clear that Disney saw the possibility of finding a new Star Wars here, since Burroughs’ work was one of the most important inspirations for George Lucasbecause he initially wanted to adapt ‘Flash Gordon’ and not being able to do so, he investigated further and found out that ‘Princess of Mars’ was one of the main references used by Alex Raymond.
Chronicle of a disaster foretold
Stanton decided to dispense with big stars in his cast and also signed Taylor Kitschan actor on the rise at the time thanks to the television show ‘Friday Night Lights’, to play the main character in the film. Disney was not entirely convinced with this and other decisions in a film whose budget soared above 260 million dollarsbut the real problems came when filming, including reshoots, was already finished.
There are many who have pointed out that they point to the ‘John Carter’ marketing campaign and claim that it was very unfortunate. The quarrels even came with the title itself, since initially it was going to be ‘John Carter from Mars’, but the studio’s new marketing president forced “from Mars” to be eliminated 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’However, when justifying his decision, he conveniently omitted that all of them had been poorly received by critics, something that conditioned their arrival in theaters.
Of course, the problems with the title came from before, since Stanton did not 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 that was not hesitated to be alluded to as soon as it became clear that ‘John Carter’ was going to be a failure.
Key here was the concession that Disney had made in that Andrew Stanton had a lot of freedom to compose the previews to his liking, a decision that ended up being disastrous. For now, 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, leaving out the big action scenes or the flashiest moments of the film. In other words, doing a very poor job of creating the need in the public to see the film. That feeling was maintained in later trailers and a Disney executive sums it all up like this: “For him, it was the most important science fiction film in history“. He believed that this was enough to win over the public. Even Kitsch acknowledged days before the premiere about the promotional campaign that “There are things I would have done differently.“.
‘John Carter’ arrived sentenced to theaters, since the studies carried out to determine the public’s interest in it indicated that the more people knew about 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 her off his back as soon as possible, because he was also already in negotiations with George Lucas to buy Lucasfilm and make his own Star Wars films, something that would take place just a few months away. after. She no longer needed a possible successor who was mortally wounded.
What a fiasco
Once it arrived in 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 being 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 global collection at 284 million. The problem is that by then it was already said that I needed to make 700 for it to make sense to make the sequel. Instead of that, ‘John Carter’ generated losses estimated at 200 million, the biggest failure in Disney’s history.
The truth is the criticism was not so harsh on her and from time to time someone comes along claiming ‘John Carter’ (my colleague Juan Luis Caviaro liked it), but it is evident that Disney prefers to forget about its existence, while Stanton returned to Pixar (he made ‘Finding Dory’) and has been making episodes of popular series (such as ‘Stranger Things’, ‘Better Call Saul’ or ‘The 3-Body Problem’).
They had to pass 10 years until I started preparing another live action film‘In the Blink of an Eye’, which is based on a completely original story but hasn’t started shooting yet. Let’s hope he has better luck with that one. If you want to watch or catch up on ‘John Carter’, it’s available to stream on Disney+.
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