Is Disney Doing Right by John Carter or Not?

I am so frustrated with Disney’s abysmal attempts to promote the “John Carter” of Mars movie. They have waited until virtually the last minute to release promotional posters and videos. They have barely allowed the actors to talk to the media over the past year or so, and when they do talk it’s mostly about the other films they are appearing in.

For a company that has invested $200 million in the first of what is supposed to be a 3-film run, Disney is acting like it’s setting up “John Carter” to be a huge tax writeoff. I don’t know how much Andrew Stanton is behind the decision to keep the Edgar Rice Burroughs fans locked out of the advanced publicity process but whoever made THAT decision was the wrong person for the job.

Disney has treated this movie like it’s just another assembly-line animation film. They have given no thought to building up a franchise fan base that will support the movie regardless of how good or bad it is (although as a fan of the John Carter books I would rather support a GREAT movie). You’d think that after 15 years of studios benefitting from the power of Internet fandom that Disney would have finally read the memo: REACH OUT TO THE FANS.

Now it’s probably too late. There is hardly any buzz about the movie. Sure, you can read about the posters and trailers on various entertainment blogs but those are not FAN Websites and communities. Even ScienceFiction.com is just another commercial Website (albeit one that seems to finally have some passionate leadership). Waiting for machine-like blogs to fit an occasional John Carter post into their endless spew of low quality entertainment blurbs is not a great advance promotional campaign. It’s a lazy, formulaic approach to marketing that has more failures than successes to attest to its efficacy.

At SF-Fandom we’re trying to do what we can to share news and publicity material in our Edgar Rice Burroughs and John Carter forum (and new member FilmGuy has done a superb job of looking for videos and posters to share in the forum). All we lack is something real from the studio in the way of substantial outreach.

The most detailed interview with Taylor Kitsch, the star of the movie, is a canned question-and-answer press kit piece that is making its rounds on entertainment Websites.

Come on, Disney! Fire your marketing department or fire them up! Get someone out there to talk with the Edgar Rice Buroughs and John Carter fan communities. Get some people to visit the general science fiction and fantasy forums and have them post updates about ALL your films on a regular basis (you know, like PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN).

Unfortunately, all the marketing departments seem to think if they just push a Facebook page they have done their jobs. Facebook doesn’t cut the mustard. There are a lot of people who don’t use Facebook despite the big numbers they claim for members. Many of those 800 million accounts are fake, abandoned, or completely passive (family-member-only access).

I’ve been waiting for this movie for a long, long time — as have millions of other Edgar Rice Burroughs readers. And here Disney is so embarrassed about the movie it changed the name from “John Carter of Mars” to “John Carter”. Rumor has it they abandoned the “of Mars” because of “Mars Needs Moms” (like anyone would confuse the two movies — PUH-lease!). I don’t care why Disney has been such a screwup on this franchise so far — I’d like to see them change their bad promotional habits, get their heads out of the Facebook propaganda, and do some real outreach.

Let the fansites do some interviews with actors.

Give some exclusive publicity material to Barsoomia and a couple of other fansites.

Run some contests to get some fans to the premier.

Sell some freaking merchandise rights.

DO SOMETHING, Disney.

How to promote your independent Scifi film on the Web

Except for all the differences that distinguish it from all the others, today is a day like any other day. I just don’t have time enough in my day to do everything I need to do.

I wonder if Hermione’s Time Turner would help me catch up on things that I need to do.

So, anyway, like there’s a thousand things happening that I’m aware of but I’m so buried in Web projects I just haven’t had time to come up for a breath of air.

But in case anyone is watching, the Mothman Prophecies Website has now been renovated. It’s a popular part of Xenite.Org and probably should have been updated long ago but it was one of the few content sections that sort of stood on its own.

We were approached by the studio or their PR agency to help promote the movie online. I asked if they would provide me with content to create a site, rather than just post some announcement and they agreed.

Studios do occasionally contact Xenite.Org and ask if we want to be added to their list of fan sites. Sure, we’re glad to accept the press releases but if you’re letting a dozen fan sites publish the same press release you’re not getting much bang for your buck.

Another studio contacted us this week about an upcoming Steampunk movie. I’m trying to see what they’ll let us do. If they just want us to link to their site, we’ll pass.

Here is a tip to all the small film studios that want to use fan sites to promote their movies: Don’t just distribute press releases. Give the fan sites something extra to work with. Create “Web Kits” that include background information, images, interview transcripts, etc.

And don’t sling this stuff out to all the major sites like UGO, I09 and then hit the smaller sites as an afterthought. Give people an opportunity to do something unique.

You’re only hurting yourselves because, frankly, I can get a LOT of Websites to mention my special projects when they stand out from the crowd. But I don’t have time to go out of my way to create something from scratch for every little film that is coming out.

Xenite.Org is a true fan site — we’re not commercialized database-driven keyword-injected promo site and we don’t have a staff of journalists writing 10-20 stories every day. We get thousands of visitors each day but we do this out of the passion we feel for the topic.

And that’s my rant for the day. Thank you for listening, but send me real, substantial content, please.

District 9 star coming back to science fiction

Heat Vision is reporting that Sharlto Copley, who played the lead character Wikus Van De Merwe in “District 9″ may take a leading role in an upcoming movie, “I am one of four”, which is based on a set of six children’s books that will be published later this year.

“District 9″ had a pretty interesting storyline that was a thinly veiled criticism of racial policies around the world.

And that is really all I can think to say about the deal. The Heat Vision article is too short for me to summarize or quote it here. They provide some more detail about cast, writers, etc.

Science fiction and fantasy movies seem to be all the rage for now. It’s impossible to know if this will just be a “thing” that happens for a few years or if the film industry will settle on them as a long-term option. You don’t see many western movies any more but they dominated the film industry calendars for decades.