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[Rafael]

The more I hear it is bad, the more I want to see it.  :oops:

[Anthony]

I haven't seen it yet (blame people like me for it flopping), but this seems like a reasonable review: http://progresscityusa.com/2012/03/15/y ... hn-carter/

Disney's marketing of this film was terrible. Not bad, not so-so, but terrible. They stripped its original title, John Carter of Mars to the unbelievably generic John Carter and released a series of trailers that did their best to conceal any concept of what the film is about.

Oddly, most of the viewing public didn't seem to know the fine details of a pulp novel from a century ago, so no one knows what this movie is about... and Disney isn't telling. Disney really botched this one and the press was ready to eviscerate it. Everyone likes a trainwreck, and the negative coverage was almost gleeful in its smugness.

It's a shame for them that the movie is actually pretty good.

[Anthony]

Oh dear.

John Carter set to lose Disney $200m

Studio Disney has admitted that its $250m-budgeted science fiction adventure John Carter is set to lose more than $200m (£126m) following disappointing box-office results.

The film, directed by Andrew Stanton of the Pixar animation house, opened poorly in the US two weekends ago with just $30m, and has so far made $184m across the globe. It has been far more successful outside the US, with No 1 openings in Russia and the UK helping to save it from an even more humiliating total.

While on paper there have been bigger box-office turkeys in recent years – Breck Eisner's Sahara took $68.7m from a reported $160m budget in 2005 and Oliver Stone's Alexander managed just $34.3m from a $155m budget the previous year – the film already looks likely to be one of 2012's biggest loss leaders. Disney's statement hints that the film's true budget may be far higher than $250m; industry analysts have repeatedly speculated that it cost at least another $50m thanks to a gargantuan marketing spend, making it one of the most expensive films of all time.

"In light of the theatrical performance of John Carter, we expect the film to generate an operating loss of approximately $200m during our second fiscal quarter ending 31 March," said Disney. "As a result, our current expectation is that the studio segment will have an operating loss of between $80 and $120m for the second quarter. As we look forward to the second half of the year, we are excited about the upcoming releases of The Avengers and Brave, which we believe have tremendous potential to drive value for the studio and the rest of the company."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/mar ... isney-200m

[dagobert]

Who wonders with that bad marketing. I've seen the movie yesterday and it was okay. It wasn't that bad, but it wasn't that good either. I have seen worse movies which made a ton of money, like Avatar. I don't know how it is in the UK, but here we haven't seen any advertising and according to many US boards, the marketing in the US was also bad. There is only Disney to blame for that.

[Pete's Dragon]

Oh dear lord what a boring, snorefest of a film. While I tried to persevere and watch it right to the end my 9 year son had enough and turned it off. Watched the last 15 minutes this afternoon and there was no big improvement.

Seems ironic that a creative team than can breathe life into, and make you care about a plethora of animated pixels can't seem to manage the same feet with live actors. I wouldnt say the acting was bad, but no-one seemed to really care about the fate of Mars, the rival cities, or John Carter for that matter.

Still, not as bad as Prometheus which is still by FAR the worst film I've seen this decade.

3.5/10