Two weekends in theaters were enough to rule Disney’s John Carter science fiction movie as one of the company’s biggest failures in Hollywood’s recent history. This Monday, Disney’s studio released a statement that read the expensive science fiction movie will bring a $200 million loss.
You’d imagine that by now people with Disney and Hollywood, the buffs of the industry, would already know the secret of top box office success. In a business so profitable, where each movie is a success in terms of revenue, producers should know exactly what factors will bring people in theaters. It seems that when Disney was checking out the John Carter story somebody didn’t pay much attention to it.
An e-mailed statement from Disney announced that the failing of John Carter will cost the company about $200 million. It is such bitter news that even the company’s second quarter profit will be affected as Disney announced it expects to post an operating loss of $80 million to $120 million, because of the disappointing John Carter picture alone.
Markets immediately reported changes as the statement became official. Disney stock fell by 1.1 percent to $42.95 in extended trading. It managed to recover by the end of the trading day in the New York market with 0.6 percent to $43.44 per share.
If you haven’t been driven by curiosity to check out the heavily promoted John Carter picture, then we’ll give you a short story info. Basically John Carter is a veteran of the Civil War that gets transported to Mars. There the veteran finds himself prisoner of 12 foot tall barbarians. After he eventually escapes the barbarians he meets a princess who needs some rescuing too.
The movie was written and directed by Andrew Stanton based on Edgar Rice’s novels and it features Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins and Willem Dafoe. The science fiction picture costs were staggering, going up to $350 million. Plus, AP Movie Critic Christy Lemire found the John Carter picture to be “massively confusing” as well as “deadly dull”.
Analysts were also blown away by the John Carter failure. Matthew Harrigan, analyst with Wunderlick Securities, told Bloomberg: “I do think this is the largest loss on a single film that I have ever seen”.
This is a great popcorn movie
It is enough like the pulp sic fi novel that it should win awards From those who read the story in our youth
Remember Edgar Rice Borroughs wrote Tarzan too
Oh, There are some early dull moments but they set up the ending
I hope that it wins some audience share in dvd sales cause my kids loved it
I just saw John Carter and my whole family loved it! With all the bad movies that are out there we have seen this year we were shaking our heads as to why this was a flop. I enjoyed every minute.