The forgotten science fiction film that was one of the biggest failures in Disney history due to its marketing campaign

In February 1912, Edgar Rice Burroughs, who had not yet reached the age of 40 (or he had not created Tarzan, that would be eight months later). released the first chapter of his new pulp novel in All-Story Magazine without too many doubts. Little did I know that ‘A Princess from Mars’ would not only change the genre forever, but would also spawn eleven more books and would create one of the most mythical characters for fans of galactic events: John Carter. And yes, the mere mention of this name makes Disney executives break out in a sweat.

John Carter, he’s laughing!

Year 2009. The Asylum (yes, the junk film production company and cheap wholesale copies) the direct-to-DVD adaptation of ‘A Princess of Mars’featuring soap opera actor and former porn star Antonio Sabato Jr Thracian lords. Instead of respecting the original work, the cuckoos treat John Carter as if he were a hunter in the Afghanistan war who is the victim of a government experiment and ends up being teleported to another world. The film was a semi-plagiarism of ‘Avatar’ (in Japan, of course, it was called ‘Avatar of Mars’) and It was the disaster we all expected from something like this.

That’s why, with what they saw, Burroughs fans were happy when, One hundred years after the creation of the original novel, Disney decided to change as it should be. ‘John Carter’ He had been trying to make it for seven decades without success (in fact, it was going to be the first cartoon film in history. ‘Snow White’), until finally the house of the mouse decided to put the necessary money on the table to complete it. The film, directed by Andrew Stanton and a star Taylor Kitsch (who spent the rest of his career here, finding refuge in television), It cost 264 million dollars, and at the time it was the third most expensive film in historyjust behind ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides’ y ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End’. Right now it is “only” the twentieth.

Of course, if we are more fair and adjust movies to inflation, there would be four more films ahead of us (‘Titanic’, ‘Spider-man 3’, ‘Tangled’ y ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’). And the result? Well, I think you can guess for yourself, since no one has talked about the saga again, even by chance, and that Stanton intended to continue with at least two more series . It only grossed $284 million worldwideand it made Disney lose about 200 million in total (remember that a movie has to earn about double what it cost to make a profit). But what happened there?

John, what a night

Oddly enough, it wasn’t a production problem, and there weren’t more internal disputes than usual, or anything like that. past a very expensive re-recording to change the opening sequence. Everything went fairly smoothly until it was time for the first look. And there, Disney’s marketing department went up a notch. In fact, The person they put in charge of advertising had never done movie marketing in his life.…and it was evident because he was unable to impose himself on his leader.

In addition to this ignorance there is that Stanton rejected any idea that came from Disney, always choosing his own.. In fact, he ignored all the criticisms and opinions they gave him when he decided that the first trailer, which aired during the ​​​​​​Super Bowl, should be a version of ‘Kashmir’ who performed, by Led Zeppelin, a song from 1975 that directly touched the younger generations. delete what they wanted to tell them. In addition, he made a series of disastrous decisions ranging from not mentioning Pixar, where he had directed ‘Finding Nemo’ y ‘Wall-E’ until the action sequences or the most unique element of the film, the dog Woola, are completely eliminated. The reason? I didn’t want viewers to know what they were going to find. I wanted everything to be magical. In his own way, he was.

And mind you, it makes sense that Stanton fought his vision tooth and nail, because For them it was a life dream that he had been planning from the first time he read the novel, and for Disney it was an obstacle that should create a new franchise. The problem is, as much of a fan Stanton was, the general public didn’t know who the hell John Carter was, even though it was a hugely influential saga. in others like ‘Star Wars’. For the people on the street It wasn’t a known intellectual property, no one dressed up like it on Halloween.Who was going to get excited just by seeing their name on a poster?

But the director was sure that this would be the case. In fact, almost the entire marketing campaign based solely on the name of its main characteras if that was going to move the public, and as a result there was a disaster. Not that Disney was too interested in getting out of the mess it got itself into: at the time, Bob Iger was more concerned with the acquisition of Lucasfilm, which had just begun and would ensure that he had the most important galactic. a saga in history. Why did I want two? All the letters were marked ‘John Carter’, and the quality did not matter.: The public had already decided not to see something they considered a plagiarism of ‘Star Wars’.

Twelve years have passed since this accidentand Andrew Stanton quit trying to fight his way out of Pixar, returning to the fold to direct ‘Finding Dory’ and the future ‘Toy Story 5’as well as being involved in its creative team. However, he has already filmed his next live science fiction film, ‘In the blink of an eye’, which has a much smaller budget than that of ‘John Carter’ and, fortunately, he will not enter any list of biggest failures. in history. If there are tests, better with soda.

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