When You Wish Without A Star

John Carter... fantastic movie, dismal box office, at least in the US.  Disney/Pixar's first live-action movie attempt scored way below their expectations and prompted the firing of at least one studio executive.

Conan The Barbarian (2011)... a decent attempt at relaunching the franchise, but also a box office failure.

Both studios had high hopes for these films.  What went wrong?  John Carter was the victim of an extremely poor advertising campaign that targeted kids and not the pulp/sci-fi/action buffs that were familiar with the books.  The Disney cable channels bombarded their commercial time with shots of smiling aliens, John Carter jumping really high and running around with his space dog.  Everyone I know that was not a die-hard fan just thought it looked stupid.

Conan's producers should have planned on a more marketable movie and cut a few scenes of gore and nudity so that they could grab the PG-13 rating instead of R.  This limited the intended audience, right out of the gate.

However, the biggest problem that both movies had was that they had absolutely NO STAR POWER!  Both title characters were practically unknowns.  This is a BIG gamble to bet so much money on (Conan cost $90 million, while John Carter's budget was a reported $250 million!!!)  Even the supporting characters were mostly unknown.  In Carter, you had Taylor Kitsch as the title character, there was Mark Strong as a bad guy and voice-overs by Willem Dafoe and Thomas Hayden Church, but you didn't see those last 2 on screen, so it doesn't count.  As far as Conan, Nobody outside of Stargate or Game of Thrones fans had ever heard of Jason Momoa.  I can't stress enough how huge of a mistake this was.  Admittedly, if either had worked, the executives involved would have been labeled as geniuses, but, alas, it didn't happen.

Conan was a slightly above average action flick, but John Carter was quite spectacular.  Fans of the books were very pleased.  There were few complaints from anyone who actually went and saw it.  There is a fan-made trailer for Carter that really helps boost interest in the film.  If only Disney had hired those guys to help promote it.  I showed it to some of the naysayers and they immediately had a 180 degree impression of the movie and wanted to rush out and see it.  I'll try to include it below.

From BoxOfficeMojo.com
Conan The Barbarian (2011)  Cost: $90 mil  Domestic Box Office: $21.2 mil
John Carter   Cost: $250 mil   Domestic Box Office: $70.7 mil

Both actually did better overseas, but that was in ALL foreign markets combined.

So.. When you film without a star, it makes no difference what studio you are....