John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood

by Sellers, Michael D.

  The Brain Trust Screening

  Principal Photography on JCOM wrapped in July 2010, and for the next four months Stanton worked on creating his first assembly of the movie at Barsoom Studios in Berkeley. By December, he had completed his first 170 minute assembly of the movie. As is often the case for VFX-heavy films, the first assembly, while instructive to the actual team immersed in editing the film, was difficult for “outside eyes” to view because of the many incomplete VFX shots — shots which in this case included many of the shots of the 3D animated Tharks whose characters were essential to the story. Hand drawn images would serve as stand-ins for many of the elements that would only be available to see later.

  But the time had come to share the film with ‘outside eyes’ and get feedback — and so it was that Stanton showed the 170-minute rough cut at Pixar to his “Brain Trust” group — Lasseter, Brad Bird, Jim Morris, Lindsey Collins, and other Pixarians. Sean Bailey and Brigham Taylor from Disney were also shown the same cut. By multiple accounts, the reaction to the material was mixed. There were concerns that the opening was too long and confusing; the middle sagged; and the character of Dejah Thoris was too aggressive and needed recalibration. The criticism came almost exclusively from the Pixarians. The studio executives, Bailey and Taylor, provided notes but there is no indication that they were in any way disturbed by what they had seen, or were really major players int he evaluation process.

  For Stanton’s part, he had not expected rave reviews -- the Pixarians had worked together before and gone through the long road to a successful movie, and “tough love” was the norm. For the group to react with unqualified raves would have been distinctly out of character; moreover, the entire purpose of the exercise was to get feedback that could help improve the movie — not simply to get affirmation that it was good.

  Key elements in the response:

  The Character of John Carter: Importantly, one area of consensus was wholehearted endorsement of Stanton’s transformation of John Carter’s character from the Galahad-like “perfect knight” of the Burroughs books, to a conflicted, war-damaged widower who is lost and who eventually finds purpose on Barsoom. This was a change that would prove highly controversial among the small but intense group of lifetime Edgar Rice Burroughs fans, but pleasing the core fan group was not high on the list of priorities. Said one production professional with a front row seat to the creative decision-making: “It was a $250M gamble to get modern audiences who have no knowledge of the source material to buy into it; pleasing a few thousand lingering fans from the sixties who are passionate advocates of the original material in all its specificity just couldn’t be a major consideration. Be respectful, yes. Let them dictate the treatment of the story, no.”

  The Character of Dejah Thoris: When it came to Lynn Collins’ Dejah Thoris, there was concern. Stanton had been adamant from the beginning that he wanted to strengthen Collin’s character, including presentation of her as a warrior capable of holding her own in hand to hand combat, and Collins, who was both a Juilliard trained actress and a lifelong martial arts student, had “the right stuff” to fulfill the more aggressive side of her character. But Dejah Thoris is also intended to be the “incomparable” princess — the most desirable woman on two worlds — and the calibration of feistiness on the one hand, and feminine allure on the other, had skewed too much toward the former.

  The Confusing Opening: Another area that came in for criticism included the opening Barsoom scene, which centered on Dejah Thoris displaying her ninth ray machine and included what the Brain Trust collectively felt was too much exposition for the audience to absorb — Barsoomian politics and science, mostly. It was suggested that this be simplified or even cut — with the latter suggestion being that Stanton consider following Edgar Rice Burroughs’ lead and have the view experience Barsoom only through John Carter — traveling there with him, and learning about it as he learns about it. Stanton was strongly against this:96 “That’s lazy thinking, guys,” Stanton replied. “If I do that, then thirty minutes in I’m going to have to stop the film to explain the war, and Dejah, and who everyone is, and we’re going to have even bigger problems.”

  But while Stanton resisted changing the opening in such a major way, he proved generally responsive to the other suggestions as to how to “plus” the film — “plus” being the Pixar term for the process by which a film is relentlessly improved as it moves from stage to stage in the journey from development to a finished film.

  After the holidays Stanton went back to work. Each morning there was a teleconference with the UK based VFX team, with Stanton’s animation background coming into play as he issue extremely detailed instructions and suggestions to ‘plus’ the animation and effects. Afternoons were spent with the editing team headed by Eric Zumbrunnen, working out the shots and scenes that would be included in the reshoot.

  Meanwhile, at Disney, the first big marketing decision that would affect John Carter of Mars was about to be made.

  Influencing the Influencers

  With a major theatrical release motion picture, some degree of marketing is present from the moment the picture is approved to go into production. Typically this early activity takes the form of press releases announcing the green-lighting of the project; announcements of the signing of director and stars, the beginning of principal photography, and other milestones. This is also the period in which decisions are made regarding what level of cross-promotional tie-ins, and which merchandising deals, and licensing arrangements will be pursued. If these are to be pursued, the effort to identify partners and develop deals -- which can often require substantial lead time--is launched.

  Increasingly, studios also use this period to get an early head start on building ‘buzz’ for the film through social media platforms like Twitter, and Facebook, and through outreach and reputation/relationship management with key “influencers” who track movies and write about them from the time they are announced until well after they are released. Effective management of the pool of influencers and the key social media platforms is significant to a studio both as a means of generating buzz -- and equally important, as a way of monitoring reactions to the marketing materials and messages that are released. Notes Pete Blackshaw, Executive VP of the Nielsen Online digital strategic services:97

  The name of the game for the studios is to take full advantage of all early signals. The downside for them is a movie can be damaged really quickly — the flow of information on these platforms, and degree to which influencers are tapping into those signals is quite profound.

  Thus there are two functions for the influencer media and social media platforms -- one, to “spread the word” and generate buzz, and two, to provide a feedback loop that allows the studio to monitor what Blackshaw calls “all early signals” and right the ship when it needs to be righted, early in the game when the audience is small and mistakes, if corrected, can be minimized.

  For John Carter of Mars, mechanisms of influence that were available and relevant at the early stage of the John Carter campaign were:

  Traditional Trade Publications: Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, plus Hollywood pulse-o-meter Deadline Hollywood. These are the “traditional” source of influence from the mainstream trade media, and remain important. Not widely read by the public, they are nevertheless monitored closely by key blogs and entertainment outlets (“2” below) who replay information derived from the trades.

  Key Entertainment Bloggers and Websites: About 40 key blogs and entertainment sites collectively reach as much as 80% of the audience for early reporting on movies-in-progress. Among the most active influencer media outlets with the largest audiences are Movies.com, Hit Fix, MovieWeb, MTV Movies Blog, Slashfilm, i09, Ain’t It Cool News, (whose founder Harry Knowles had been attached as a producer on Paramount’s John Carter of Mars), ComingSoon.net, Filmsite.com, Collider.cm, Badass Digest, Joblo.com, Empire Online, Total Film, ScreenRant, Hollywood.com, Hit Fix, MovieWeb, Movieline, Indiewire/The Playlist, Dark
Horizons, Topless Robot, Fused Film, Den of Geek, Film School Rejects, HeyUGuys.com, First Showing, Cinema Spy, Digital Spy, The Geek Files, Geek Tyrant, Comic Book Movie, ReelzChannel, Cinema Blend, What Culture.com, and as many as a dozen others.

  Key Social Media Platforms Twitter and Facebook: These two social media platforms are of strategic importance and building a strong list of followers on each is important, keeping in mind that the early followers on these platforms are most likely to themselves be “mini-influencers” likely to tweet and comment about a film they are excited about. Many have their own personal blogs and/or have extensive networks of their own on Facebook and Twitter and thus one follower on Twitter or Facebook equals many hundreds or even thousands of “followers of the follower” who in turn have their own networks. Disney had available both the official John Carter Twitter and Facebook presence; and the official Walt Disney Pictures Twitter and Facebook presence.

  Disney Bloggers: In addition to the other outlets that apply to all movies, Disney maintains a “Disney Blogger” network which has as many as 500 blogs devoted to all things Disney. With names like Disney For Life, Mouse Dreaming, Babes in Disneyland, The Disney Dork Blog, Disney Fan Ramblings, Stitch Kingdom, and Adventures By Daddy, Everything Walt Disney World, the Disney bloggers are positioned to exert influence on Disney enthusiasts, but are generally not “in the same league” as the top entertainment blogsites in terms of audience reach and relevance to the potential John Carter audience.98

  The task before Disney at this early stage was to manage their Twitter and Facebook profiles effectively, and to maintain a flow of good information and materials to this manageable “ecosystem” of “influencer” bloggers and journalists and “mini-influencers” who are the early adopters on Facebook and Twitter.

  Breaking Down the Influencer Media

  At the top of the Influencer ecosystem are corporate owned megasites like the Internet Movie Data Base (estimated 80M unique monthly visitors), Yahoo Movies (estimated 27M unique monthly visitors), Rotten Tomatoes (estimated 7M unique monthly visitors), and Fandango (estimated 6.8M unique monthly visitors).99

  However, when it comes to tracking movies a year or more in advance of their release, the influencers tend to be a more independent and colorful group, none moreso than Harry Knowles of Ain’t It Cool News. In 1997, the second year that AICN was in existence, Bernard Weinraub wrote in the New York Times:100

  Harry Jay Knowles is Hollywood's worst nightmare. In an industry whose executives, agents and producers ferociously seek total control -- over information, over the media, over one another -- this 25-year-old college dropout and confirmed film geek is driving them crazy. His power comes from the bits and bytes of information and gossip spread over his rapidly growing Web site (http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com), which is averaging two million hits a month. He works out of his father's ramshackle home in Austin, Tex., but his impact in Hollywood is extraordinary--and instantaneous.

  Of the influencers who focus on upcoming movies, ComingSoon.net is one of the largest, with an estimated 1.6M unique monthly visitors, while MovieWeb, Movies.com, and Hollywood.com each have an estimated 500,000 unique monthly visitors.101 Slashfilm, started by Peter Sciretta in 2005, has an estimated 510,000 unique monthly visitors counts 74,000 Facebook fans, carries a Google Page Rank of 7, and has won more than a dozen major awards.102 Collider.com, with 32,000 Facebook Fans and a Google Page Rank of 7, is self-described by editor-in-chief Steve ‘Frosty’ Weintraub, as “an uncalled for, online barrage of breaking news, incisive commentary and irreverent attitude that will do for the internet what Art Modell did for the Cleveland Browns; i.e. move it to Baltimore.”103 Sci-fi site iO9 under editor-in-chief Annalee Newitz boasts 161,000 Facebook fans and a Google Rank of 7, and defines its beat as “science, science fiction, and the future.”104 UK based Total Film, with 125,000 Facebook fans, touts itself as “The Modern Guide to Movies” while ScreenRant, which was started in 2003 by Vic Holtreman “as a place to rant about some of the dumber stuff related to the movie industry,” sports 140,000 Facebook Fans and a 7 Google Ranking. Other top influencers include Hit Fix (54,000 Facebook Fans and a 6 ranking), and Digital Spy ( 47,000 Facebook Fans and a 6 ranking).

  These, plus a few dozen others, represent a critical mechanism through which a studio can lay a buzz foundation and, equally importantly, keep an ear to the ground for feedback on what is working, and what is not working, as they roll out a film.

  Disney: The View From the Outside Looking In

  For an outsider following the JCOM story, this “Preliminaries” phase was unusually long and characterized by sporadic press releases that began in January 2007 with the announcement that Disney was pursuing the Edgar Rice Burroughs property A Princess of Mars. There were then announcements that Andrew Stanton had been signed to direct the film, and that Michael Chabon had been hired to do a rewrite. Then came the announcement, on June 15, 2009, that Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins had been cast as the leads in the film. Some of the articles announcing the cast signing include reference to a budget of $150M:105

  Canadian film actor Taylor “Friday Night Lights’ Kitsch has been cast as the lead in Disney's upcoming adaptation of author Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter of Mars “Wall-E" Stanton in 2010. Stanton confirmed that the $150 million budgeted sci fi production, will be live-action. "There are so many creatures and characters that half of it's going to be CG," he said. "but it will feel real. The whole thing will feel very, very believable."

  Later in the summer of 2009 there were more cast announcements.106 There was silence in September (the month that studio chief Dick Cook was fired) and in October (the month that Rich Ross was hired as the incoming studio chief). In November, evidence that Ross was reviewing all projects came in the form of a press release that Disney had halted production on Captain Nemo: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea -- a press release that included assurances that this did not mean that Disney was abandoning major event films under Ross, stressing “big event films like 20,000 Leagues, John Carter of Mars, and Tron are still a priority.”107

  In the social media arena, on November 28, 2009, Disney created a Facebook page for John Carter of Mars, although no entries were posted until January 2010.108 Then as JCOM began principal photography in January 2010, more releases came, announcing additional cast acquisitions and eventually, on January 16, 2010, came the official announcement that principal photography had begun in London.

  On Facebook, January 2010 saw Disney make its first social media efforts, posting four articles with links and posting the official synopsis for the first time:

  From Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, WALL-E), John Carter of Mars brings this captivating hero to the big screen in a stunning adventure epic set on the wounded planet of Mars, a world inhabited by warrior tribes and exotic desert beings. Based on the first of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Barsoom Series,” the film chronicles the journey of Civil-War veteran John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) who finds himself battling a new and mysterious war amidst a host of strange Martian inhabitants, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins).109

  Then, from February 2010 onward, with the film in Principal Photography, Disney publicity and the still leaderless marketing department went silent. Aside from a brief announcement on March 12, 2010, that Michael Giacchino would score JCOM, no visible publicity or marketing efforts were logged by IMDB Pro publicity monitoring.110 The Facebook page was not updated;111 the Twitter account did not exist and would not be created until June 15, 2011;112 there were no announcements, including no official announcement of the completion of principal photography in July -- a milestone that traditionally receives an announcement in the media.

  This period of “media silence” coincided with MT Carney taking over as President of Marketing in April 2010, as JCOM was in its 52nd day of a 100 day shooting schedule. The silence continued until finally on August 15, 2010, a few weeks after the completion of principal photog
raphy, came the first mention of JCOM during Carney’s tenure -- an announcement that John Carter of Mars would be released on June 8, 2012.113

  Again, “media silence” ensued after the release date announcement -- a silence which continued until the end of the year. Thus in all of 2010 the total output from Disney consisted of four Facebook updates in January 2010 followed by silence on Facebook;114 plus (as monitored by Internet Movie Data Base) the announcement of Giacchino’s signing in April 2010, and the August announcement of the release date being June 8, 2012.115

  In reviewing the publicity and marketing output of Disney during 2010, the obvious inference to draw is that attention to JCOM was sporadic at best, with long periods of silence and no sign of any major engagement by Disney marketing. Such an inference would be consistent with the notion that JCOM suffered from Dick Cook’s departure; the firing of the entire Cook executive team, and the instability that followed and continued until at least the hiring of MT Carney in April 2010.

  In sum, based purely on the public record of the output of the campaign from inception in 2007 through the end of 2010, it is possible only to conclude that Disney did nothing special to draw attention to the film, and limited itself to the basic output of a very few media releases, with no other visible marketing efforts taking place.

  The View From Within Disney

  MT Carney’s first major creative decision concerned the tagline for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice -- coming up with “It’s the Coolest Job Ever.” When the film flopped badly, the knives came out, with trade magazine The Hollywood Reporter labeling it “one of the hall-of-fame worst taglines ever.”116