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.

“John Carter” of Mars Turned Out Okay

I wrote a lengthy review at for “John Carter” of Mars in which I share my very positive, supportive thoughts about the film.

What I want to share here is my disgust at the apparent poison pen campaign that someone in the film industry appears to have conducted against the movie. I began to realize something was up after reading this negative article in the L.A. Times. This was the second news story in a week where I came across references to some unnamed rival studio boss who was predicting disaster for “John Carter”.

I don’t know yet if the movie flops — I hope not. Now I want to see the sequels even more than before.

But we’ve been hearing all sorts of bad press about the movie from the film industry over the past couple of weeks. Supposedly, women didn’t like the movie. Oddly enough, there were plenty of women in the theater I went to who really enjoyed it.

Supposedly no young people are interested in the movie. Again, there were plenty of kids, teenagers, and college students in the audience — and they gave the film an ovation after it was over.

I don’t know how often people in the film industry try to torpedo each other’s projects — I suppose it happens quite often — but what disgusts me is that the news media played along. Someone down low apparently knows how to press buttons with the L.A. Times and other major news organizations willing to sell their integrity by pandering to old fashioned poison pen campaigns.

You’d think professional journalists would know better, but perhaps the disdain with which science fiction and fantasy are often treated by the news media excuses this kind of nonsense in their eyes. Well, the L.A. Times has no excuse. They should know better, and I expect better of them.

Disney screwed up royally in clamping down an embargo on the movie’s production for two years. They should have engaged with the fans all along, given us access to the development of Barsoom, and fed a steady stream of information and spy reports to major fan sites.

Disney owes the Edgar Rice Burroughs fandom a huge apology. They can make it up to us, however, by greenlighting the sequels to “John Carter” and getting the advance promotion right. Andrew Stanton did a great job with the movie. He just needs to come out and engage with the fans.

I think Edgar Rice Burroughs would have been pleased with the movie.