Fans Believe “John Carter 2″ Can Be Achieved

I joined the Back to Barsoom Facebook Group when I first learned about it but I haven’t been feeling well the past few months so I only joined the discussions there a couple of days ago. While there are only 8,000+ members so far the core group of participants are very dedicated to their cause.

After all, for a “major flop” the “John Carter” film has managed to bring in almost $300 million so far this year. And while “John Carter” has completed its first run in US theaters for the most part, the DvD and Blu-Ray will be released on June 5 — which is still more than a month away.

The Carter fan group leaders estimate they need to help drive about $200 million in revenues for Disney in order to build a business case to greenlight a sequel. Technically, this is achievable. Other “failed movies” have generated millions of dollars in post-box office revenues. In fact, Saul Zaentz proved that merchandising rights tied to bad movies (such as Ralph Bakshi’s “The Lord of the Rings, Part One”) can be very, very lucrative. Had Zaentz not kept that candle burning in the window for 20 years there might have been no Peter Jackson trilogy.

Star Trek fans brought about a movie franchise launch 10 years after their TV show was cancelled. And from the movies sprang up four TV shows.

So what the fans of “John Carter” propose is not just wistful dreaming. All they have to do is bring together enough people to drive a couple hundred million dollars in DvD and merchandising sales. And these folks have connections with ERB, Inc. and the Disney Co. and PIXAR — they might just be able to arrange the right meeting of marketing minds to kick off a merchandising campaign to put Saul Zaentz’ Middle-earth Enterprises to shame.

Stranger things have happened.

To that end, discussions are under way (with some input from me, so understand I am NOT an unbiased reporter) for establishing a more public face for the John Carter fan group. They will most likely keep the Facebook group going for strategic discussions. That makes sense. But ideas being considered for now include:

• Starting a scifi convention circuit where volunteers reserve and man fan tables
• Special promotional artwork for posters and flyers to be distributed at conventions, book stores, DvD stores, comic book shops, gaming shops, etc.
• Letter writing campaigns (one is currently underway now)
• Asking science fiction bloggers to write about John Carter a couple of times a week in advance of the DvD release (I have offered to help promote those blogs by linking to them across my network)
• Starting a Web forum for John Carter fans (most likely on the central Back to Barsoom fan site
• Perhaps putting together a legal entity (a corporation) to take on some licensing (custom merchandise or things that can be manufactured through out-source and on-demand providers)

The letter writing campaign I mentioned above is called Operation Woola and I shared details at the SF-Fandom forums.

There is, by the way, ANOTHER Facebook site — a fanpage (basically a Facebook public forum) called John Carter Back to Barsoom – The Sequel Campaign where the founder is hoping to collect LIKEs to show off to Disney and potential merchandisers.

These are some very determined people. If they see the news media say anything negative about “John Carter” they are all over the articles with comments pointing out the movie’s worldwide box office take, the fact that millions of people DID go see it and love it, and to show their support for the film to Disney.

Having joined a few “save the show” fan movements in the past, I go into this with my eyes open — but frankly, to avoid doing something simply because it seems so daunting is not in my blood. I do it because I love the challenge and because I love my favorite TV shows and movies and books.

I do it because I am a science fiction fan.

So the clarion call has gone out. Come join us. You don’t have to have anything more than your teeth, your passion, and a love for “John Carter” and Barsoom.

John Carter Outperforms “The Lorax” 2nd Week in a Row

It’s official, according to Box Office Mojo. Not including Sunday’s revenues, “Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax” has only taken in $172 million after 3 weeks, whereas “John Carter” has taken in $179 million after only 2 weeks. Naturally, the US news media continues to heavily favor “The Lorax” in reporting box office success.

We can nitpick the metrics all day long but I’ll grant you that “The Lorax” has proven itself a profitable movie because it has already recouped its production costs.

“John Carter” may make back its $250 million production costs through continued box office sales but it’s looking more likely it will have to rely on Blu-Ray and DvD sales, TV licensing, and very limited merchandising sales (such as the soundtrack CD). Realistically, when you make a $250 million movie you probably need to think about the marketing well in advance of release. I’ve been saying that for two years.

Meanwhile, John Carter fans continue to assemble on Facebook in an effort to drum up support for a sequel. Disney has not yet announced anything (and if they decide NOT to do a sequel they may say nothing, if only to keep fans hanging and entice more ticket sales).

“John Carter” is a great movie but unfortunately the US news media flexed its social media strength to persuade American viewers to stay away. Even though several million American fans did go see the movie and overwhelmingly favored it in their online reviews and social media posts, The Hollywood Reporter and other online news organizations pulled out all their guns to pummel the movie’s reputation. They withheld vital overseas box office information, repeated the same old data several times each day, and consistently declared “John Carter” to be a disaster even though it has outperformed every other movie at the box office in 2012.

US audiences have the rest of this week (until Thursday night) to see “John Carter” at their local theaters. It’s possible the 3-D experience (totally unnecessary in this writer’s opinion) is putting off some people in addition to the negative media stance. However, you can also see “John Carter” in regular 2-D at many theaters.

It’s a real shame that Andrew Stanton and Disney decided to do the movie in 3-D. It probably would have been more appealing in a 2-D showing.

US News Media Buries “John Carter” Despite $100 Million Opening Weekend

How often do you see major entertainment and news organizations falling all over themselves to pretend that a movie like “John Carter” isn’t doing well? It’s like these journalists made such a big fuss about how “John Carter” was doomed that when the movie finally opened they intentionally downplayed all good news so as to try to kill the movie.

Yeah, Hollywood Reporter, I’m talking about you — and you, TIME, and you LA Times, and so on. If you want to know what the real story is about the “John Carter” box office is you almost have to stick to Forbes.

Here on Sunday night “The Lorax” has taken in about $123 million worldwide after 2 weeks and “John Carter” has taken in about $101 million worldwide after 3 days. Is it just me, or is the American news media struggling with the math?

The domestic box office looks dismal for “John Carter” — I will not dispute that. The movie has apparently only taken in around $30 million in the United States this weekend. This was despite hundreds or thousands of very favorable comments from viewers on social media sites — and the positive comments outpaced the negative comments by a factor of about 3 to 1 (this is not scientific but I looked at multiple Websites).

In other words, most of the people who see the movie like it. In fact, many of the commenters — who don’t have millions of visitors reading their comments — LOVE “John Carter”. But apparently the lack of enthusiasm among the young men ages 20-42 has grasped the media’s attention.

The majority of the audience appears to be made up of families, teens, and adults under 50 — but the majority of the positive comments are coming from women, especially young Taylor Kitsch-loving women.

If this trend holds true I think that the male audience will eventually follow because we all know that once the guys figure out that the girls love this movie they will follow the girls. And, besides, it’s a pretty good movie.

The most condescending post-release review I saw this weekend came from Locus, whose reviewer appears to be upset that Andrew Stanton could not resist updating the 100-year-old story for today’s audience. I mean, come on — be for real. Edgar Rice Burroughs was writing for a rather unsophisticated audience 100 years ago, as compared to today’s film-viewing audience. His readers in 1912 didn’t have 100 years of science fiction evolution laying the foundations of their expectations.

Still, all this confusion is not really the sensitive news media’s fault. It’s the fault of the Disney Company for not reaching out to and engaging the science fiction fan community starting 2 years ago. Successful film franchises are built on solid audience expectations these days and Disney went out of its way to confuse the story and the audience.

For example, why did they change the movie from “John Carter of Mars” to “John Carter”? The cover story for that major screwup is that they were afraid the audience would confuse the movie with “Mars Needs Moms”. Please. The audience would not have confused anything if Disney would have just been open and informative about the movie all along.

But to add insult to stupidty, Universal Pictures scooped Disney by signing a deal with AMC Theaters to insert the Lorax character (voiced by Danny DeVito) into AMC’s pre-film warning to the audience to please keep quiet. So every showing of “John Carter” at an AMC theater is pre-ceded by an ad for “The Lorax”. In fact, “The Lorax” has been inundating movie audiences with this kind of promotion for weeks.

What did Disney do to reach out to movie audiences? Virtually nothing.

Disney’s former VP of marketing, MT Carney, was supposed to ramp up Disney’s marketing machine. Instead she resigned under suspicious circumstances, apparently taking the fall for the failed marketing before her “plan” even began rolling out. But the real problem is that Disney’s Board of Directors and CEO have lost touch with the audience. They don’t understand that you MUST engage with the audience well in advance of a film’s release to build up anticipation for it.

The field is just too competitive.

All that is now water under the Battleship. Universal can expect to do well with its Taylor Kitsch movie because now they know who his demographic is — it ain’t the 30-42yo fanboys. Expect more advertising directed at women to come from Universal for “Battleship”.

But with a $100 million opening weekend “John Carter” doesn’t have to be written off as a total failure. It remains to be seen whether Disney can follow up this weekend’s strong worldwide showing with improved domestic promotion. Or maybe they don’t need to do so at all. Maybe the worldwide box office will return Disney’s $300 million investment (Production and Promotion costs combined). Maybe Disney will make $400 million off the film and greenlight the sequels.

Meanwhile, take what you read in the US news media with a huge bag of salt. They don’t want you to know how badly they called the shot, so they are NOT going to admit that “John Carter” had a HUGE opening weekend with $100 million.

More discussion follows at SF Fandom’s John Carter Forum.