John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood

by Sellers, Michael D.

  As of December 11, John Carter’s profile, compared to its main competition, was problematic but not devastatingly so. The Hunger Games was much too far out in front for John Carter to overtake it for the March box office title spot -- but the Disney film was still in the running for second place and historically, a second place March film could open at $50-60M. The Hunger Games’ advantage was extreme -- 670,902 Facebook “Likes” to 42,560 for John Carter; a 9/1 Positive/Negative sentiment ratio to 6/4 for John Carter, and an IMDB rank of 32 to 140 for John Carter. But while John Carter could not begin to keep pace with The Hunger Games -- it was positioned reasonably well versus The Lorax, which would come out a week earlier than John Carter on March 2. Lorax had an IMDB rank of 373 -- but had a very strong Facebook presence with 210,000 “Likes” to John Carter’s 42,560. In terms of “chatter” -- Hunger Games again had a huge lead with 50 pages of message board chatter on IMDB, compared to 10 pages for John Carter and 2 Pages for the Lorax. Clearly, the race was for second place between John Carter and Lorax.

  Based on the chart, it was clear that John Carter was light years behind The Hunger Games and there was no hope of overtaking it, or even competing with for the March buzz. That battle had been lost.

  But there was hope in that John Carter’s position as of December 11 was competitive with the rest of the March competition and thus it was in position, with a solid promotional campaign going forward, to have a solid shot at the $55M - $60M opening it would need to be considered a success and generate a sequel. Such an opening would give it two strong weeks before The Hunger Games arrived.

  The key question was -- would the campaign going forward become more surefooted and find ways to resonate with the audience that would be paying increasing attention to it now that it was in the final push?

  Or would the misfires continue?

  Adding to John Carter woes was the fact that the bar for John Carter was considerably higher than for any of the other films. Its budget of $250M stood in stark contrast to 21 Jump Street ($40M), The Lorax ($70M) The Hunger Games ($100M), and Wrath of the Titans ($150M).207 Given its massive production and marketing investment, it was clear that John Carter should be occupying the position on the chart occupied by The Hunger Games, and the fact that it was in among the pack, while costing more than twice as much as most of the films, was reason for concern.

  Breaking Down the Box Office Challenge

  A theatrical campaign is targeted on achieving certain opening weekend figures and after that, while the campaign continues in a sustaining mode, it is reviews and word of mouth that will propel a film to either fade quickly, follow the normal pattern of earning 35% the opening weekend and 65% over the remainder of the run, or develop legs so that the opening weekend ends up being less than 35% of the total.

  What figures did John Carter need to get?

  First, although there had been speculation since the October New Yorker article had come out that John Carter might need “as much as $700M” to break even and generate a sequel, the reality was that no “sequel-ready” film earning more than $400M worldwide had ever failed to generate a sequel. Indeed, the sequel “trigger” point is a far more complicated calculation than simple breakeven, particularly for Disney, where film franchises are a “wave generator” creating streams of income throughout the Disney ecosystem. Among serious analysts, there was confidence that a figure of $500M global gross would easily justify a sequel.

  Breaking that number down -- if $500M was the trigger point, that meant that, if John Carter followed a pattern of 40% of its income coming from the US, and 60% overseas, it would need $200M total from the US domestic box office, and if the standard pattern was for domestic opening weekend to be 35% of the domestic total -- that meant John Carter needed a $70M opening weekend to be on track for $200M domestic gross and $500M global gross.

  While $70M would be an unequivocal “win” there were other paths to $500M global total. Andrew Stanton, for example, had a track record of creating films which had “legs” -- Finding Nemo, for example, ended up with a pattern in which the first weekend was only 20% of the final domestic total, far better than the norm of 35% of the total coming from opening weekend.208 And with Wall-E, the figure was 28%.209 So if Stanton’s patterns held up, opening weekend might end up being just 25% of the final domestic total. Thus an opening weekend of $50M, with the same kid of “legs” that Stanton had produced with Finding Nemo and Wall-E, could generate a $200M domestic gross.

  The other factor was that increasingly, major action/CGI films were doing relatively better overseas, to the point that a 40-60 split was now becoming a 33-67 split for many films. This pattern, if it held true, meant that the US domestic total might not have to reach $200M in order for a $500M global total to be achieved -- the figure might end up being closer to $167M.

  In the end, with all variables considered, in order for John Carter to be certified a “hit” by the entertainment media on opening weekend, it would need an opening at least in the mid $60M range. Anything in the $50M range would be considered inconclusive, and anything below $50M would be considered a failure given the high budget and marketing cost. Below $40M, for a film with production and marketing cost of $350M, would be regarded by the media as a disaster of epic proportions.

  At this stage, in December, the few early projections that were available had the film opening at $25M.

  The Air Wars Begin

  On December 15 Disney released the IMAX poster for John Carter, initially exclusively via Fandango but within minutes other sites began to pick it up and replay it.210

  Like the images released a few days previously, the IMAX poster was created in-house at Disney. Its emphasis on the white apes and the arena scene would be a consistent feature of the in-house materials that Disney would generate for the entire run of the campaign, including the posters, the banners, and the trailers and TV spots.

  On December 16, the TV campaign launched with two spots: “Warhoon” and “Awakening.”

  In “Warhoon”211 the spot begins with a line of green Martian “Warhoon” warriors appearing on a canyon ridge with John Carter in the foreground:

  This opening image immediately creates a “western” feel -- the cliff, the Warhoons (Indians?), even the handle of the sword John Carter has sheathed in his back looks like the butt of a rifle and the Thark fighting harness looks like a bandolier. The spot then reverses to show John Carter and Dejah Thoris, with John Carter saying “get her out of here” against a background of a cracked desert floor. Dejah Thoris is carried away, then Carter turns and faces a charging horde of Warhoons with the Martian hound Woola loyally beside him.

  Disney began placing this spot on male demographic shows -- notably the college football bowl games, as well as news broadcasts.

  In “Awakening” the spot begins with John Carter waking up in the desert (8 seconds of a 30 second spot is devoted to this), then follows with a mixture of shots balancing mystery (John Carter and Dejah in the temple of Iss), action, and spectacle -- ending with the ubiquitous white ape scene.212

  Along with the two spots, Disney released two images, both again featuring the “dusty west with creatures” look that by now had come to characterize the film.

  The critical question was: what would be the reaction to the TV spots?

  Very little, as it turned out.

  After the surge of chatter on December 1, the volume had quickly leveled off.

  Worse yet -- the TV spots released on December 16, and playing steadily on multiple networks during the week that followed, barely had an impact at all.

  Where was the bump?

  Other than a ‘mini-bump’ on the 16th, the day the TV spots began playing, there was nothing to indicate that the TV spots were having an effect.

  The holidays came and Disney continued to play the same two TV spots with significant frequency.

  Meanwhile, worldwide marketing president MT Carney was clearing out her desk and getting ready to make what wo
uld be her final trip back to New York, ostensibly for the holidays but in reality it was a permanent move. The New York based Carney had never moved to Los Angeles, returning home each weekend to be with her children in Manhattan, and by December she and Rich Ross had agreed that he would make the announcement in early January, and that she need not return.

  Back at Disney, the campaign went forward on autopilot through the remainder of the holidays. By the end of December, John Carter TV spots had been playing for two weeks, largely on male-oriented programming, particularly the college bowl games and other sporting events.

  During December, a frequent sentiment that was emerging among the influencer media was that the writer or commentator wasn’t sure about the movie based on what he or she was seeing, but given that it was Andrew Stanton who was directing, there was reason for hope. Stanton was definitely not a “brand” to the public in the way that James Cameron was, but he was a brand to the movie intelligentsia who drive buzz and the question of whether or not he should be touted in the advertising (“From the Academy Award Winning Director of Wall-E and Finding Nemo”, or “The Live Action Debut of the Academy Award Winning Director of Wall-E and Finding Nemo”) was a critical one.

  But both Stanton and Carney had agreed that the campaign would not tout “from the Director of Finding Nemo and Wall-E.” Both felt that it could send a confusing message, given Stanton’s reputation as a Pixar director. Meanwhile, however, as December dragged on and the campaign failed to generate excitement, and bloggers and writers and commenters across the web referred repeatedly to Stanton as a primary reason for having interest in the film, the question arose -- should the campaign reconsider its initial decision?

  The idea of highlighting Stanton in the promotion was given further boost by the fact that his Pixar stablemate Brad Bird’s live action debut with Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, had just been released to positive reviews and box office, making the topic: “Can Pixar Directors move successfully into live action?” one that had significant potential.

  At Collider.com, Brendan Bettinger wrote:213

  I have not yet connected with the story, but I give Andrew Stanton, the writer/director behind WALL·E, the benefit of the doubt. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol finally proved once and for all that an animation director—and specifically a Pixar graduate in Brad Bird—can make the leap to big-budget live-action successfully. Stanton has the material, passion, and skills to follow suit.

  Others wrote in a similar vein, but at Disney, it was the holiday break; MT Carney had already disengaged; John Carter was not at the forefront of any top-level thinking, and the opportunity to launch the “Pixarians go for live action” thrust passed.

  The Japanese Trailer

  Ironically, the one event over the holidays that generated positive chatter on entertainment outlets was the discovery by Ain’t It Cool News’ Harry Knowles of a Japanese John Carter Trailer initially uploaded without fanfare or awareness in the US by a Japanese YouTuber on December 15th. Knowles posted an embed of the Japanese trailer with positive comments about its contents on December 23rd at 9:17 PM CST.214 Immediately, other influencer media outlets began to pick up on the story.

  Unlike the US trailer which opened with John Carter in the arena battling white apes, and generally left the audience with no clear sense of where the action was taking place, or how John Carter came to be there, the Japanese trailer spent 45 seconds, almost half of its entire length, setting up John Carter on Earth. The trailer quickly became the first clear “hit” with influencer media, who embedded the trailer with favorable comments. Brendan Connelly at Bleeding Cool.com raved “Superb new trailer”215 and other commentators welcomed the answers the trailer provided to the question -- how did John Carter get to Mars? -- a question that had been completely ignored in the main Disney theatrical trailer and the TV spots it had spawned.

  Nick Newman at The Film Stage summed it up:216

  If there’s one consistent issue plaguing the two trailers and TV Spots for John Carter, it’s a lack of context. When an audience is being sold a movie, it usually helps to get a wider breadth of information on its plot, characters, and tone, but the first of those characteristics has been missing this entire time . . . Anyone who wanted to see that is in luck… so long as they speak Japanese. An international preview for Andrew Stanton‘s live-action debut has popped up . . .

  Slashfilm,217 Comicbook Movie,218 Geek Tyrant,219 Hey U Guys,220 and dozens of other key influencer media sites weighed in favorably, ironically making the bootlegged Japanese trailer not intended for US audiences the first solid hit with the US influencer audience.

  The influencers were playing their role as a feedback mechanism.

  Was anyone at Disney listening?

  Bleak Holidays

  Other than the ripple of positive buzz based on the Japanese trailer, the news was bleak. Steady airplay of the two TV spots released on December 16 was having almost no measurable buzz affect. Meanwhile, throughout December on Twitter, the official @JohnCarter account was tweeting less than once a day.221 From the moment of the release of the trailer on November 30, signaling the launch of the main campaign, until the end of December, Disney’s official @JohnCarter account tweeted a total of 12 times, and two of those were retweets of Andrew Stanton, the film’s director, who was far more active on Twitter than Disney was, and who, it seemed, was helping the film measurably by regularly tweeting updates like: “Day one of our mix is over, and Mars is shining bright. A good sign.” Stanton was also doing a regular Friday night Q and A with fans on Twitter that didn’t appear to be being managed by Disney in any fashion -- it was just the director hanging out and taking questions from excited fans--virtually the only real “buzz” that was being generated anywhere in social media.

  On Facebook, the story was the same. A total of 11 posts to the John Carter Facebook page in the same 30 day period, and John Carter’s Facebook “like” count was hovering around 55,000.222 The Hunger Games continued to vastly outdistance John Carter, with more than a million”likes”and was followed by The Lorax, which also dominated John Carter on Facebook with more than half a million “likes” as of the end of December. Each “like” in turn represented another Facebook user profile which, when viewed, would show The Lorax as something that the profile holder was a fan of, and each like represented a Facebook wall feed that would receive the Facebook updates from The Lorax page and display them to friends. Thus the multiplier effect of having 10 times as many “likes” as John Carter was substantial.

  Increasingly, The Lorax was looking like a contender who would pose a genuine challenge as it entered its second weekend on March 9, 2012.223

  The John Carter Files

  As December progressed, I re-read, for the first time in twenty years, the trilogy that forms the basis for John Carter and the hoped for sequels: A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars, and Warlord of Mars.

  One of the things that Edgar Rice Burroughs’ stories provide is escape from everyday worries. Barsoom and the other world created by Burroughs represent an opportunity for the reader to be transported to a world that is vividly imagined, and where the hero is like you, only better, stronger, smarter, and more capable, representing what Gore Vidal called the “dream-self” in an essay written in 1967.224 Vidal wrote of how that “dream-self” that Burroughs created so artfully fulfilled an important purpose:

  How many consciously daydream, turning on a story in which the dreamer ceases to be an employee of I.B.M. and becomes a handsome demigod moving through splendid palaces, saving maidens from monsters.....although this sort of Mittyesque daydreaming is supposed to cease in maturity, I suggest that more adults than we suspect are bemusedly wandering about with a full Technicolor extravaganza going on in their heads.

  While Vidal speaks of a self-generated extravaganza -- how much better to be able to plug in to the extravaganza that Burroughs created with such verve?

  Vidal goes on to write of Tarzan and John Carter
:

  All of us need the idea of a world alternative to this one. From Plato's Republic to Opar to Bond-land, at every level, the human imagination has tried to imagine something better for itself than the existing society. Man left Eden when we got up off all fours, endowing most of his descendants with nostalgia as well as chronic backache. In its naive way, the Tarzan legend returns us to that Eden where, free of clothes and the inhibitions of an oppressive society, a man can achieve his continuing need, which is, as William Faulkner put it in his high Confederate style, to prevail as well as endure . . . . The individual's desire to dominate his environment is not a desirable trait in a society which every day grows more and more confining. Since there are few legitimate releases for the average man, he must take to daydreaming. James Bond, Mike Hammer and Tarzan are all dream-selves, and the aim of each is to establish personal primacy in a world which in reality diminishes the individual.

  As December progressed, I found that my re-immersion in the world of Barsoom after being absent for many years was providing an escape from the troubles of my life that I hadn’t felt in some time. It came at a time when I faced a unique array of problems, some externally generated, most of my own making -- one in particular had dominated my spirit for months and threatened to crush it -- and reacquainting myself with John Carter and his indomitable “We still live!” spirit strengthened my own, and reminded me that the “Burroughs magic” was not confined to the workings of the adolescent mind.

  Each morning I spent an hour updating The John Carter Files. One of the functions I built into the blog was an automated aggregator which would seek out all articles across the web that mentioned “John Carter” and place them into a single blog post, with each article having a 250 character introduction and a link. Each morning I ran the aggregator and sifted through the results, deleting all the results that had nothing to do with the movie and then reading the haul that remained. When an article was particularly interesting, I created a separate post for it; the others I would leave in the main “John Carter News Today” post. If an article was negative but in a reasonable and intelligent way, I would leave it in. If an article was over-the-top or mindlessly hostile (and there were plenty of these) I simply deleted it.