LOS ANGELES -- When Walt Disney Co. executives gave the greenlight to the project that became the Martian adventure film "John Carter," they hoped they were launching the studio's next big franchise.
It was to be directed by Andrew Stanton, who had been associated with a string of successful Pixar Animation Studios films -- starting with the 1995 hit "Toy Story." The source material was a century-old sci-fi touchstone that had inspired filmmakers including George Lucas and James Cameron.
The movie would fit perfectly into Disney Chairman and Chief Executive Robert A. Iger's big-picture plan to produce movies that would spawn sequels, become theme park attractions and drive sales of "John Carter" merchandise.
Instead, with a weak opening this past weekend, Wall Street analysts expect the company to take a $165-million loss on a movie that has joined "Heaven's Gate," "Ishtar" and "Howard the Duck" in the constellation of Hollywood's costliest flops.
What happened? The very things Disney thought would guarantee box-office success may have left "John Carter" star-crossed from the start.
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The acclaimed director had never made a live-action movie before.
The executives guiding and helping market his movie were new on the job and had limited experience running movie divisions.
And the source material, written beginning a century ago by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, had already been so picked over by its admirers that critics and audiences found the film hackneyed and stale.
Already plundered
Producer James Jacks, in fact, once took Burroughs' Martian chronicles to filmmaker Robert Zemeckis, who'd made movie gold out of "Back to the Future" and other films. Zemeckis, a friend of "Star Wars" creator George Lucas, read the material and, Jacks says, told him, "I don't think so. George has really plundered these books."
Jacks worked with other filmmakers to get "Carter" into orbit for Paramount Pictures, finding willing partners in "Sin City's" Robert Rodriguez, "Pan's Labyrinth's" Guillermo del Toro, "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow's" Kerry Conran and "Iron Man's" Jon Favreau -- all of whom struggled to mold the dense stories into a workable script.
Paramount ultimately abandoned "John Carter" and allowed the rights to the material to expire. Even through Stanton was in the middle of production on "Wall-E," he lobbied Walt Disney Studios Chairman Dick Cook to snap up the rights. Cook called Stanton two months later to say "John Carter" was his to direct. Stanton outlined the first three books, wrote a first draft of the script in 2007 and spent years working on the project in pre-production.
By the time "John Carter" started filming in January 2010, however, Cook had been replaced by Rich Ross, a television executive who had never overseen a film of this scope.
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'The worst thing'
Ross named as president of production Sean Bailey, a movie producer who lacked experience as a studio executive, then installed MT Carney, an outsider from the New York advertising world who'd never worked at a studio, as marketing chief. Then Carney left in early January and was replaced by veteran Ricky Strauss -- just as the film's promotional efforts were to kick into high gear.
"The worst thing that can happen to a movie is the marketing team changes midstream," said Peter Sealey, marketing strategist and former marketing president at Columbia Pictures. "It's disheartening for the filmmakers, for the talent. They lose belief in the film."
Ross theoretically could have scuttled "John Carter" as he did with a planned $150-million production of "Captain Nemo: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." Or stood firm and said "no" as he did to star Johnny Depp, who'd made a fortune for Disney starring in its "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise, until costs were cut on his upcoming "The Lone Ranger."
Instead, the studio stood behind Stanton, whose "Wall-E" and "Finding Nemo" brought in a combined $1.4 billion in worldwide box-office receipts and went on to collect Academy Awards for animated feature.
"It's OK to swing for the fences and try to make a giant hit and establish a franchise. That is a worthy goal," said Harold Vogel, a veteran media analyst and president of Vogel Capital Management. "But still, you've got to wonder how the budgets get so out of control."
