John Carter
and the
Gods of Hollywood
by
Michael D. Sellers
Version 2.0
Universal Media
February 23, 2013
Copyright © 2012 Michael D. Sellers
Cover design by Eamon O’Donoghue
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Printed in the United States of America
Universal Media
eBook Version 1.0: December 05, 2012
eBook Version 2.0: February 23, 2013
ISBN-13: 978-0-615-68231-0
Dedication
John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood is respectfully dedicated to the memory of Edgar Rice Burroughs and to all those who are working to keep that memory alive, and legacy intact.
Preface
In 1912, struggling Chicago businessman Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote A Princess of Mars, the tale of John Carter, a Virginia cavalryman mysteriously transported to Mars where he would find adventure and meaning in life alongside Dejah Thoris, the incomparable Princess of Helium. The story would lead to an eleven book series and become the cornerstone of modern science fiction. Burroughs went on to write Tarzan of the Apes and, at the time of his death in 1950, was the best-selling author of the 20th century, with his books translated into 58 languages and outselling his contemporaries Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald combined. His creation Tarzan was then, and remains today, the single most globally recognized literary character ever created.
In the 1960s, countless minds of my generation encountered the extraordinary imagination of Edgar Rice Burroughs through the Ace and Ballantine paperback reprints that were published monthly, and which could be found in every drug store and corner newsstand throughout America. Already half a century old, the books felt as current as if they had been written yesterday, and we collected them all, 40 cents a copy for the Ace Books, 50 cents for Ballantine, and read them multiple times.
Discovering Burroughs was not a lonely or isolated pursuit — the fans were legion. Gradually a long list emerged of scientists and storytellers, politicians and spiritual leaders, all of whom said that it was Burroughs who had caught their imagination, and inspired them in their youth, among them Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Carl Sagan, Ronald Reagan, Jane Goodall, Billy Graham, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and James Cameron.
Burroughs’ writing was extraordinarily vivid and detailed. The planet that he created seemed so real that many of us felt almost as if we had lived there, or could live there–more than that, it induced a yearning to be there and experience the world of our dreaming, and thus it was that for decades Barsoom played as a movie in our minds, while Hollywood attempted to create a real movie. But Hollywood couldn’t quite pull it off — the imagination of Burroughs, for decade after decade after he wrote A Princess of Mars in the fall of 1911, continued to exceed Hollywood’s capacity to create. Meanwhile some of our greatest filmmakers made liberal use of scenes, images, and ideas from Burroughs’ Barsoom: Star Wars and Avatar in particular drew heavily upon Burroughs, mining it for creative inspiration.
But they were not the original, and we still yearned for that.
Then in 2008 Disney announced that Andrew Stanton, Director of Wall-E and Finding Nemo, would be directing a film version of A Princess of Mars and in January 2010 filming began — and all of those who had been waiting for decades through one false alarm after another knew that at long last this cherished source-work of imaginative fiction would finally make it to the screen. We owed Stanton and Disney a deep debt of gratitude for bringing a film such as this to the screen, and to the world.
But then the dream slowly and inexorably turned to a nightmare.
Everyone who has followed Disney’s John Carter now knows the basic outline of what happened. The film cost at least $250M to make and $100M to market; it opened poorly in the US, better overseas, and 10 days into the theatrical run Disney announced it was taking a $200M write-down due to its high cost, which meant that even with $280M in global box office gross, it was still a financial failure. John Carter was declared to be a failed enterprise. It was game over.
Fans, meanwhile, rallied to support the continuation of the series, and the film began to grow a steadfast and persistent cult following. While Disney has not officially ruled out a sequel nor returned the rights to the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate, it is generally considered to be settled knowledge in “the industry” that Disney has no intention of continuing the series.
Against this background, John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood says “Not so fast!” and attempts to achieve an in-depth understanding of what really happened with a view toward keeping open the question of whether continuation of the series is justified. It asks:
1) What is the true value of the literary property? What was it about Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1912 story that caused it to be so wildly popular and influential in the first place? Why, exactly, did scientists and storytellers from Carl Sagan to Ray Bradbury to George Lucas to James Cameron find inspiration in the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs? Why has it been in print continuously for 100 years? What was his particular genius? And have the film adaptations and borrowings from Burroughs fully harvested the value the old master presents, or is there untapped value there?
2) What is the full story of what went wrong with the release of John Carter? It is generally acknowledged that the marketing was ineffective -- what, exactly, happened with the marketing? Why was it not only ineffective, but inactive in ways that are possible to document? How much of an impact did this have on the final performance? How much of a difference would effective marketing make?
3) John Carter earned close to $300M -- a figure which, for example, puts it in the range of fellow 2012 sci-fi adventure Prometheus, which earned a sequel. The difference is the high cost of production for John Carter. How did such a high cost of production come about? Would sequels necessarily cost as much?
4) A fan movement has grown up supporting the continuation of the John Carter series. What is the actual relevance, if any, of the fan movement? In the age of social media, what does the presence of such a movement mean to any possible sequel or reboot by Disney or another studio?
5) Given all factors, is there a bona fide business case for continuation of the series? How would it alter the equation if cost savings could be achieved by producing films 2 and 3 concurrently? What are the prospects of bringing in foreign coproduction partners from China and/or Russia -- the two largest overseas markets where, in both cases, John Carter was a success? What other strategies could be employed to reduce risk for Disney and increase the likelihood of success?
To make the case that I have set out to make requires that I provide a detailed, critical look at all aspects of the film enterprise including the development, production, and the marketing campaign. This is not an exercise in simply finding fault and casting blame. The purpose is to show how certain mistakes and assumptions, compounded by other mistakes and assumptions, created a “perfect storm” of errors that resulted in a film that fell vastly short of its potential. Under these circumstances, making a final judgment as to sequels needs to proceed from a clear understanding of what went wrong, and how it might be corrected, to arrive at valid conclusions about the worth of the film asset that has been created, and the potential for a series.
In documenting damaging mistakes, inexplicable lapses in marketing
activity, and the like, I have confined myself almost entirely to verifiable data with attribution that can be accessed via footnotes that have been provided, or in some cases through the use of social media and marketing research software that is readily available. I have provided full attribution from articles and public and private interviews. In the case of some private interviews which comprise a small percentage of the overall content, I agreed to respect the privacy requirements from interviewees who are under current and ongoing nondisclosure agreements, principally with the Walt Disney Studios. There are a relatively small number of occasions where attribution has not been possible; recognizing the importance of providing credible, verifiable sourcing, I have minimized the reliance on such non-attributable information.
My hope is that the “takeaway” of a reasonably openminded reader after reading this book will be a) that the underlying literary property truly is a treasure that has great value left in it; b) that correctable mistakes in the marketing of John Carter plus the presence now of a motivated fan base means that second and third films can reasonably be projected to do substantially better in their theatrical runs than the first film did; and c) that with smart, savvy efficiencies in production and the use of foreign financing/coproduction options from territories where the film did well, a business case for successful continuation can be made.
Finally, I acknowledge and embrace the fact that this is personal for me. The imagination and storytelling genius of Edgar Rice Burroughs inspired me in countless ways in my youth. It gave me the confidence to pursue a life that has had its share of adventures and misadventures, first in service to my country, and later in pursuit of dreams that I believed in. I have had failures and made more than my share of mistakes, but it was Burroughs who taught me to give my all to things that I believe in, and my life has been richer for it. It was the old master who taught me to believe in the power and possibility of the human spirit. I and others of like mind “pledge our metal” to his. If you think we’ll give up easily, consider the spirit of John Carter as it comes through in this passage:
“I knew though that it was but a question of minutes before their greater numbers would wear me down, or get around my guard. I must go down eventually to certain death before them. I shuddered at the thought of it, dying thus in this terrible place where no word of my end ever could reach my Dejah Thoris. .....
Then my old-time spirit reasserted itself. The fighting blood of my Virginian sires coursed hot through my veins. The fierce blood lust and the joy of battle surged over me. The fighting smile that has brought consternation to a thousand foemen touched my lips. I put the thought of death out of my mind, and fell upon my antagonists ......”
Or, in the words of Andrew Stanton’s John Carter:
“Find a cause... fall in love... write a book.”
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the goodwill and encouragement of Jim Sullos, Cathy Wilbanks, Janet Mann, Willie Jones, and Tyler Wilbanks of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., as well as the support of the many fans, bloggers, and scholars within the Edgar Rice Burroughs fan community, and the emerging global community of fans of the film John Carter. I would also like to thank Danton Burroughs for his life’s work on behalf of his grandfather’s legacy, and for introducing me to the Burroughs family, Danton’s wife Linda Burroughs and her daughters Dejah and Llana Jane Burroughs for their support and inspiration. I want to thank Richard A. Lupoff for his mentorship, inspiration, and window into the great Burroughs revival of the 1960s. I want to thank Bob Zeuschner, Scott Tracy Griffin, Mike Shaw, and Jerry Schneider of the LA SubERBS for their fellowship and Jeff Elmo Long of the Burroughs Bibliophiles for his editorial coaching; Roland Trenary and Bob Couttie for their support, Andrew Stanton for giving his all to the film and for “the tweet,” and Taylor Kitsch for being a stalwart not just onscreen but off. I want to thank Valerie Sellers for her help and expertise in revealing the mysteries of modern social media monitoring; Don Barton for 10 years of friendship and wisdom; and Dr. Stanley Galloway for patience and thoroughness is pointing out “nits” both big and small. I especially want to thank all of those from the film crew and studio who agreed to be interviewed and in so doing took the leap of faith and trust that I could receive your information and maintain your privacy. I would like to thank my own Dejah Thoris, Rena Sellers, who has stood by me far beyond what I could reasonably expect, and Khanada Taylor, and Jan Austin for their leadership and inspiration to the fans of the film. And finally -- thank you to Dick Cook for green-lighting the film, and to Disney Studios for enabling the production of a first class filmed version of Burroughs’ classic tale – something others tried to do and failed for the better part of a century.
Addendum to the Acknowledgements
For Kindle Version 2.0
Release Date February 23, 2013
In the three months since first making the transition from indie filmmaking to indie publishing with John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood, I have been thrilled by the number of readers who have read the book and written kind and favorable words about it in blogs, on Facebook, and in Amazon Customer Reviews. As I write this addendum on the morning of February 22, 2013, the number of Amazon Customer Reviews has reached sixty, with forty of these offering a five star rating. I am deeply humbled and grateful for the very positive response and encouraged by it. I want to offer a very sincere thank you to all who took the time to read the book and register your opinion, and encourage new readers to register their opinion as well.
Fourteen of the first sixty Amazon reviewers noted that Version 1.0 suffered from a regrettable infestation of proofreading errors. As one reviewer noted, the errors were “mostly grammatical and punctuation more than spelling; obviously his spell-checker worked fine.” The most common errors were doubled words or dropped words, as well as formatting errors that occurred in the eBook conversion process. The fault for allowing these errors to slip through in Version 1.0 is wholly my own. I humbly apologize for this.
Kindle Version 2.0, released on February 23, 2013, reflects a major copy editing improvement as well as the incorporation of new substantive information that has become available since Version 1.0 was released. On the copy editing front, a very substantial number of typographical errors have been identified and corrected. As with so much of the John Carter story, fans of the movie and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ books have played a key role in the cleanup by reaching out to the author and submitting errors for correction. I want to particularly thank stalwarts Cameron Switzer in Tokyo, Lisa Panopio in Manila, Anton Webber in Munich, Usha Amritraj in Hyderabad, and Patrick Sellers in Los Angeles, who proved to be able allies. While a concerted effort has been made to correct all errors, some may remain. Readers are encouraged to submit any copy or proofreading errors to [email protected]. Please be assured that any errors sent in this way will be cornered, captured, and consigned on their final long voyage down the River Iss so that future versions will continue to evolve toward the ultimate goal of a 100% error free text.
Prologue: A First Inkling of Trouble
On November 30, 2011, the day that Walt Disney Studios was set to debut the trailer for the Andrew Stanton film John Carter on Good Morning America, I was eagerly waiting. It would be the best glimpse yet of a film that I’d been anticipating since my childhood.
I had discovered the Martian tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs at the library at Patch Barracks in Stuttgart Germany during a rainy Little League summer when I was 12, and by the time I reached adulthood I had read all the Burroughs books multiple times, and been inspired by them. I could sketch from memory an accurate map of Barsoom, recite the full history of the Tharks and John Carter’s relationship with them, and draw accurate renderings of all the creatures and cultures of that mystical planet.
Now, decades later, the movie that had existed only in my mind all these years was finally about to become a reality on cinema screens worldwide. The release date was March 9, 2012, exactly 100 days from
the November unveiling, and I was looking forward to watching the climax of the campaign unfold over the coming twelve weeks.
Finally, the trailer played, and the campaign was launched.
But what had been hyped in advance as the debut of the full theatrical trailer didn’t turn out to be that at all. Rather, it was a 45 second TV spot, with the first 11 seconds consisting of having the camera zoom in slowly on the Times Square giant screen, only cutting to the actual spot ten seconds into it.1 The spot itself seemed disjointed and unfocused. The full trailer finally did debut sixteen hours later on Jimmy Kimmel and thankfully it was better than the cut-down version shown that morning, but it still seemed to miss the mark. Who was John Carter? Why was he leaping hundreds of feet into the air and battling apes in an arena? And where was all this taking place? Of course, I knew the answers to all these questions, but I had read the books. What would I think if I just came across this trailer without knowing any of the history?
I wonder what people are saying about it?
I checked online and saw that the trailer, and Disney marketing, were taking a shellacking. The Film Stage wrote:2
After Disney botched the trailer release of the one film that needs all the good buzz it can get, by releasing just 49 [sic] seconds of it early this morning on GMA, we now have the full thing thanks to IGN.... I held some hope after the disappointing first trailer, and the latest one is definitely an improvement, but still not what I hoped for coming from such a great storyteller (also visually speaking) as Stanton....
To entertainment outlet Collider.com offered the following:3
Good Morning America had a sneak peek of the new John Carter trailer earlier today, which probably wasn’t the best way to present a hard sell to an unfamiliar audience, not to mention a critical group of fans ready to tear into the film adaptation that dropped the most interesting half of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars....
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