John Carter is now officially a flop of galactic proportions. /ppThe Walt Disney Co. says it expects to book a loss of $200 million on the movie in the quarter through March. That ranks it among Hollywoods all-time biggest money-losers. /ppDirected by Pixars Andrew Stanton, the 3-D effects-laden movie about a Civil War veteran transplanted to Mars was already headed to the Red Ink Planet, according to Cowen Co. analyst Doug Creutz. Yet he expected a write-down of about half that size. /ppDisney said John Carter has brought in about $184 million in ticket sales worldwide so far. But ticket sales are split roughly in half with theater owners. The movies production budget is estimated to be about $250 million with about $100 million more spent on marketing. /ppThe movie was based on a series of books written by the late Edgar Rice Burroughs, starting with A Princess of Mars in 1912 and ending with John Carter of Mars, published posthumously in 1964. /ppThere was plenty of material for sequels and prequels, but they seem highly unlikely now. /ppWith a 51 percent Tomatometer rating on movie site Rotten Tomatoes, the film got average reviews. (Find The Stars **1/2 review at span class=”bold”KansasCity.com/movies/span.) /ppThe poor reception was a shock given Stantons directing success with movies like Finding Nemo and WALL-E, each of which won an Oscar for best animated feature. /ppDisney said the loss on John Carter will cause its studio to lose $80 million to $120 million for the quarter. Profits from other movies and home video disc sales will be more than wiped out. /ppMiller Tabak analyst David Joyce said the studios projected loss is more than double what he had expected, and that will cause him to trim his estimate for Disneys earnings. The hefty spending on production and marketing is causing the Burbank, Calif., company to book the loss sooner than might be the case for a smaller-budget film. /ppIts good that Disneys airing their dirty laundry now, he said. /ppThe flop ranks with historys biggest box office disasters, although its tough to rank them precisely because of inflation and incomplete disclosure. /ppDisneys eerily real computer animated movie Mars Needs Moms from last year cost about $150 million to make but only sold $40 million in tickets worldwide, according to Hollywood.com analyst Paul Dergarabedian. /ppWarner Bros. Speed Racer from 2008 cost about $120 million, but took in only about $94 million in theaters. Columbia Pictures Ishtar in 1987 cost about $40 million but sold only $14 million in tickets domestically, he said. /ppObviously no studio puts this much into a movie hoping for this kind of result, he said. /ppIts not clear how much box office revenue Disney needed to break even on John Carter, but one estimate pegged it around $600 million worldwide. Thats a figure reached by fewer than 65 movies ever, Dergarabedian said. /ppDisney hopes to overcome the setback with other big-budget movies this year, including The Avengers from its Marvel subsidiary in May and Pixars Brave in June.
Article source: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/03/20/3502761/disney-heading-for-the-red-ink.html
Tags: john carter of mars, walt disney co, Red Ink Planet, andrew stanton, Cowen Co., john carter, edgar rice burroughs <BR/>Related posts:
