http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ishtar-lands-mars-1…
Disney's new movie "John Carter" is such a colossal flop that they are actually going to have to take a quarterly write down for it. This means that is it is a) material and b) such a flop that they can't even pretend to come up with a scenario where they break even on the movie.
The article above is fairly long, with a bunch of stuff I don't really care about, but this fascinates/amuses me. Bases on opening weekend alone they pretty much know that it will be a significant enough loss that they need to take a write down. Normally, I'd say people need to be fired, but this article sure seems to say that the new people at Disney aren't really to blame.
this is why we need box office futures
They are banned, right?
i'm actually a fan of fantasy-adventure movies like LoTR and Pirates (the Disney movie, not the porno...).
for some reason... John Carter didn't seem very appealing to me. even though the story was a pioneering work of science fiction when it was written, i wasn't really familiar with it, and the old school sci-fi vibe that i got from the trailers were kind of meh...
Whoever greenlit $250+ million needs to be taken out back and shot. Avatar didn't cost that much to make, for fuck's sake.
If it was greenlit for $250M whoever keeps control of the financing should be shot as well because they would have overspent by 40%. The total budget was ~$350M.
Wow, now that I think about it I could probably build a competitor to Foxconn and hire world class Chinese engineers for a fraction of what it cost to make that crappy movie.
350M? That's insane. No way CG should cost that much now. I have seen stuff put together by college students on Youtube that equals what I saw in the previews.
Hollywood must care much about RoI. Yea, you occasionally get an Avatar or Dark Knight, but flops like this just kill returns. You can grind out piss-poor horror films for 10-15 million a pop, see 30-40 million in gross, and then let dvd sales and promotions net each other out.
Shark Night 3D: 25 million cost, 40 million box office. Use a franchise, even a crap one like final destination: 40 million in, ~160 million out. Better to hit singles consistently than a homer once every game.
They completely ignore returns. TV is no exception, although I think they are learning. (We see more retarded reality shows, which are phenomenally profitable) But still, everybody tries to make a Game of Thrones, but most end up with a Terra Nova.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)
$237M to make...
god i can't believe its been almost 3 years since it came out... where the hell is Avatar 2? dont they want another $2B?
was John Carter in 3D? that usually boosts sales due to higher ticket prices.
the trailer successfully prevents me from seeing it in theater
exactly... I only saw one trailer too. so good job on the marketing there Disney...
Movie was awful. Can't believe my friend forced me to see that shit.
I wonder what goes through people's heads when they put out shit like this.
@West Coast Rainmaker
You mentioned the insane profitability of reality TV shows, and it reminded me that my buddy's company was approached to do one. The only thing we could figure would be that it was going to be a Dirty Jobs kind of send up (his company is construction related). The deal was that they wouldn't get paid anything for the entire first season, but if it was picked up for a second season they'd be paid a million bucks.
Exactly the right idea. The great thing about reality shows is that you basically create the cast. You can find people who will work for free just to appear on camera.
Takes off? Great. Doesn't? You just paid for airtime and a camera crew. Think about what the return of the first season of the Jersey Shore was...even after they got established, MTV basically has those actors locked in; their fame is only attributable to their presence on the show.
Great article here on the background behind John Carter's failed marketing: http://www.vulture.com/2012/03/john-carter-doomed-by-first-trailer.html
Not going to lie though, the more I read about it, the more I want to see it. Marketing flub or greatest mind games in marketing history?
They will make the money back through international and home video sales. They all do. It will just take longer than this quarter.
Too Big To Fail
I'm sorry but this is just wrong. If people didn't want to see a shit movie in theaters, why would they On-Demand or spend even more money on the DVD/Blue-Ray?
Some movies do in fact flop. To think a movie never flops is retarded. Not to mention, the studio only gets like 50% of the domestic Box-Office take and probably even less for International.
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