John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood

by Sellers, Michael D.

  The Home Entertainment Release Finally Provides a “Win”

  Six weeks later on June 5, 2012, John Carter was released in the US on Blu-ray/DVD and when the numbers came out, it had done what it had failed to do at any point in its theatrical run -- come in first place among all films released that week. It beat the two other wide releases -- Safe House and Act of Valor -- and was, for the first time, recipient of a modicum of respect in the media.

  In the aftermath of the DVD/Blu Ray release, the fan group passed through the 10,000 member barrier and as the summer progressed, continued to add new members at a rate of 300 per week.

  John Carter, it seemed, might be buried under a mountain of negativity and disengagement from Disney -- but it wasn’t dead, not in an absolute sense.

  No one could predict where the fan activism would lead, or whether the positivity of the fans would result in anything other than the creation of an ongoing passionate, but ultimately niche community.

  What was clear, however, was that the combination of Andrew Stanton and Edgar Rice Burroughs had resonated; a community of new fans had been created; ERB’s legacy would not vanish -- at least not now.

  The Edgar Rice Burroughs Legacy

  Even though Edgar Rice Burroughs had been the most popular author of the first half of the twentieth century, the reality was that prior to the release of John Carter, the Edgar Rice Burroughs fan community consisted primarily of aging Baby Boomers (or older) who had discovered Tarzan and John Carter via the paperbacks of the 1960s. The fan community worldwide prior to the release of John Carter worldwide was unlikely to exceed a few hundred thousand.

  Over the course of its theatrical run, a total of 20 to 25 million viewers saw the film in theaters.

  The Blu-ray/DVD release expanded those numbers.

  Did the movie produce new fans who would extend the legacy of Edgar Rice Burroughs? Or were they simply movie fans?

  On July 19, members of the Facebook fan group began to post their introduction to the movie and, in many cases, described how the movie led them to the books:328

  Justin Russell

  I literally knew nothing about ERBs books or the John Carter character prior to viewing the movie...There are few films that have pulled me in, tugged at my heart strings and made me feel excited like JC did. ..I immediately took friends and family to see it and all enjoyed it..... I have since read the first three books and I tell people about it any chance I get.

  Keith Rightmyer

  I first heard of the movie through a trailer either in a theater or during the Superbowl (I only watch for the commercials!). I remember that I was interested but didn’t really learn much from the spots, so I researched the name “John Carter” on the internet to learn about his roots. I honestly wasn’t aware that E.R. Burroughs wrote anything other than Tarzan. The information I found and the additional TV spots intrigued me enough to make sure I saw it in the theater on opening weekend. Boy, was I glad I did! I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. The action and adventure was exactly what I look for... Having just whet my appetite, I sought out the books that this film was drawn from and delved further into the worlds of Barsoom, Jasoom and John Carter.

  Deb Cates

  I did not know anything about John Carter until it was confirmed in the press that the film was in production- then, I only heard about it because my husband, a long-time ERB fan and collector of fantasy, sci fi, and comics, started talking about it. When we saw the first trailer in theaters together, he squeezed my arm and started bouncing. My husband does not “bounce.” “It’s John Carter!! It’s John Carter!!”, he said. I wasn’t sure what to make of the trailer. It looked like Prince of Persia, which I saw and with which I was not much enamored. However, my husband got advance screening passes and I went with him to see it, not really expecting anything. I laughed. I cried. I tensed up. I breathed sighs of relief. I fired off a million questions under my breath. When it was over, I repeated the Barsoomian phrase “och ohem octais whis Barsoom” over and over in my head for weeks. (I am a linguist and I love fantasy languages). I could not believe the movie “flopped”, because it is the best film I have seen in theaters in a long time. Thank God for project Gutenberg- I downloaded and read the first three John Carter books over the course of three days.

  Lance Salvosa

  When I heard that Andrew Stanton was going to adapt A Princess of Mars for the big screen, something inside me clicked. I remember being at an old friend’s house over ten years ago, marveling at the army of titles that rested on his bookshelf. Although I found the title a bit cheesy at the time, my friend put his foot down in its defense. “Don’t knock it,” he said sternly. “It’s really good.” So last year, I began spelunking in various bookstores, only to find it wasn’t in circulation. When I finally found a copy, I found myself savoring every line and every chapter. All the while getting drawn deeper into a world I had never heard about and yet, never wanted to leave. One book wasn’t enough; I had to have the rest of them. And from the tortured nobility of Tars Tarkas to the cackling laugh of Issus to the innocent fearlessness of Carthoris, the books have remained very treasured gems on my shelf. Best of all was the timeless mystery and white-hot courage of John Carter himself. He didn’t know how old he was; he only knew what mattered. And there was something stirring and meaningful about that. The movie just didn’t meet my expectations. It surpassed them COMPLETELY. All of the romance, all of the big-hearted action. IT was ALL THERE.

  These are just a few samples; there are hundreds more online at The John Carter Files.

  There can be no doubt -- in spite of the negativity, in spite of the largely bungled opportunity -- the legacy of Edgar Rice Burroughs will undoubtedly grow, and not be diminished, as a result of Disney’s John Carter. An estimated 50 million viewers worldwide have seen the movie either in theaters or on Blu-ray/DVD since it came out, and as a direct result of this, there are new Edgar Rice Burroughs fans everywhere. Disappointment over the handling of the movie and its outcome cannot, and should not, obscure this fact.

  Even so, it’s hard to look at this situation from the perspective of a Burroughs admirer and not wonder .......if only.

  If only indeed.

  Accountability: What Were They Thinking?

  One of the great American corporate success stories is FedEx, a company built on the premise of reliability and on-time performance. Within the FedEx system, every time a flight departs even one minute late, or any other error occurs, an investigation is carried out which identifies what went wrong and assigns responsibility on a percentage basis to the various company components that were involved in whatever went wrong. For example, an investigation might find that a late arrival was 50% due to a maintenance issue, 30% flight operations, and 20% ramp operations. This system has had much to do with FedEx’s corporate success, and is an ingrained part of the culture.

  What of the John Carter debacle? Where does the responsibility lie? The major players in the John Carter drama were, from top to bottom, Robert Iger, Dick Cook, Rich Ross, MT Carney, and Andrew Stanton. Many others played important roles but these five are the ones who made the decisions that ultimately produced the outcome.

  There are many in the fan community who, terribly disappointed with the outcome of the release of John Carter, want to believe that there were active, intentional efforts to cause the film to fail for any number of reasons. In carrying out the research, the output of which is John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood, I did not find any credible evidence to support such a theory. What I found was a “perfect storm” of competing priorities and personalities that led to decisions at various steps in the process which, when taken in aggregate, produced the outcome that we observed.

  The following attempts to summarize the accountability of each of the major “players” and offer a theory as to “what they were thinking” when they made the decisions they did.

  Dick Cook

  What is he accountable for?

  Dick Cook was responsi
ble for the decision to acquire the rights to A Princess of Mars; the decision to offer the picture to Andrew Stanton; the decision to green light the film at a whopping budget of $250M; and the decision to give Andrew Stanton something very close to full creative control over the screenplay, casting, and the production of the film. What could Cook have done that might have changed the outcome?

  First, rather than allowing Stanton to staff the production with enabling producers he might have introduced a senior studio-oriented producer into the equation as a means of retaining a higher degree of studio control over the production. Second, he might have questioned the budget level and either pushed back, insisting on a plan that would achieve the film at a lower cost, or at least insisting on some “name” leads to help lower the risk of the film once it’s budget had gone as high as it did. He chose not to do any of these things, instead choosing to support Andrew Stanton and his team almost unconditionally.

  What was he thinking?

  The whole John Carter episode occurred in part because Cook happened to reach out to Andrew Stanton, who was then in post production on Wall-E, at a time when Stanton had A Princess of Mars on his mind because Paramount had just released the property back to the Burroughs estate and he was a fan of the property. Making such a “check-in” call was pure Cook -- he is regarded in creative Hollywood as one of the all time “good guy” executives who knows how to interact with creative talent, appreciates their perspective, and knows how to nurture them.

  Apart from the fact that it was Cook’s basic human nature to check in with talent, the call to Stanton also reflected Disney-Pixar factors. Having recently acquired Pixar, Stanton was a hugely important creative talent in Cook’s universe -- perhaps as meaningful as, for example, Johnny Depp was to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (a franchise that began in a conversation between Cook and Depp).

  When Stanton floated A Princess of Mars, it was not purely ‘I want to do this next’ -- he floated it as a fan, saying that this is a property Disney should consider on its own merits. But he also signaled his interest in directing it and, by extension, his interest in testing the live action waters as a director.

  Cook knew the Burroughs’ property from the 80’s and 90’s when Disney had it. On the face of it, the idea of Disney reacquiring the A Princess of Mars had merit. Disney needed boy-friendly franchises, and in the right hands, this could be one. Plus Disney needed to keep Stanton “on the reservation” at Disney. And so it was an easy decision to acquire the rights and offer the post to Stanton, thus keeping Stanton in the fold with Disney and creating the potential of a boy friendly franchise that was in line with strategic needs. It also helped kept the Disney-Pixar relationship in a good place.

  Thus Cook’s likely thought process in acquiring the rights and launching the project is easily understood.

  But what of the decisions regarding the script, production, casting, and budget?

  Here it is somewhat more difficult. It appears that casting decisions came first, while Michael Chabon was rewriting the script and hence before a final budget could be prepared. If this sequence applies -- casting first, then budget -- it helps explain why the studio might not challenge Stanton on the “no stars” approach. If on the other hand the budget decision came first, then the question becomes -- did Cook consider the idea of casting more “bankable” talent as a bargaining chip in the budget negotiations with Stanton and the producers? Imagine the decision to make the original Pirates of the Caribbean, on the one hand with Johnny Depp, and on the other hand without Johnny Depp.

  Cook accepted the higher budget and Stanton’s choices in large part because, first of all, it was in his “DNA” to support talent and enable them, and secondly because in this particular case, it was difficult to make a case of “comparable” films and how they did because the two comparables that mattered most -- Andrew Stanton’s two previous films -- had made enough to succeed even with a budget of $250M. In essence Cook concluded that Stanton had earned the right to make the film the way he wanted to at a budget of $250M.

  Cook was “all-in” with Stanton. That’s who he was, and how he operated. He was true to himself.

  One can’t help but wonder what the promotion of John Carter would have looked like had Cook remained at the helm of Disney Studios long enough to see through to conclusion the project that he had initiated.

  Robert Iger

  What is he accountable for?

  Iger was responsible for the firing of Dick Cook, and the hiring of Rich Ross to replace him. He set an agenda for Ross that included a mandate for Ross to undertake substantial changes to the way the studio promoted and marketed its projects. He either instigated or confirmed the decision to deny John Carter the kind of all-out marketing push (including merchandising, licensing, and cross promotions) that its $250M budget all but demanded. He either instigated or authorized the unprecedented announcement on March 19, just 10 days into the theatrical run, of a $200M write-down -- an action that produced the highest spike in publicity and chatter about the film, all to the film’s disadvantage as it was still in the early phase of its earning cycle.

  What was he thinking?

  As CEO of the Disney parent corporation, of which the studio division represented only 7% in operating revenues, Iger’s focus was on managing the entire Disney ecosystem in such a way as to maintain the confidence of the Wall Street analysts who in turn affected the confidence of investors and thus performance of Disney stock. He set the overall model and philosophy of the various divisions, and worked on making the acquisitions and personnel appointments to enable those divisions to operate successfully according to his overall vision for the company. He left intense focus on individual film projects to the head of Disney Studios and thus he cannot be regarded as having been a “hands on” participant in the production and release of John Carter.

  In the fall of 2009, at a crucial time for the John Carter project, Iger fired Cook, and chose Rich Ross to replace him. He did so with the intention of refashioning the role of Disney Studios, turning it into a distributor of established brands Dreamworks, Pixar, Marvel, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, and Disney. Iger felt Cook had to go in order to achieve the “new order” he was trying to implement. Cook wasn’t precisely an anachronism -- but there was a “throwback” quality that Cook and the studio represented and that Iger wanted to transform with fresh blood and “fresh thinking”--if reducing the role of studio chief to “coordinator in chief” can be considered fresh.

  It is unclear whether Iger thought much about John Carter (of Mars) until quite a bit later, as the film was making its way through post production. In interviews after the film came out, he claimed to have developed a “sense” that it wasn’t going to succeed, well before it came out. And it must be remembered that Iger’s courtship of George Lucas and his infinitely more attractive Star Wars franchise began in May 2011, when John Carter was in post production.

  In the end, Iger’s contribution to the John Carter situation was probably limited to three elements: First, the acquisition of Marvel was a project that Iger keenly pursued and, once successful, removed whatever remaining luster John Carter held for the studio. Second, he chose Rich Ross to replace Dick Cook, in the process removing John Carter’s main ally and replacing him with Ross, who had no allegiance or personal connection to the film. Third, Iger appears to have participated in or at least sanctioned the decision to limit marketing support to John Carter to something less than an all-out tentpole effort -- a decision that was entirely consistent with his overall view of the film and his greater interest in acquisitions like Marvel and, soon, Lucasfilm. All three of these decisions made sense from Iger’s perspective; all three ultimately hurt John Carter.

  Rich Ross

  What is he accountable for?

  Ross was appointed head of Disney Studios in October 2009, two months before John Carter was scheduled to go into production, and remained the studio chief until April 20, 2012, when he was fired. Ross had no r
esponsibility for the green-lighting of John Carter or the casting. He was in a position, had he chosen to, to require a downsizing of the budget (as he subsequently did with The Lone Ranger). But Ross’s main accountability is in the area of marketing. He was responsible for the hiring of MT Carney; the decision to forego an all-out marketing approach that would have incorporated merchandising, licensing, and cross promotions; the decision to advance the John Carter release date by 3 months from June 8, 2012, to March 9, 2012, and he was responsible for creating, or failing to create, a sense of urgency in the marketing of John Carter, and in particular has a degree of responsibility for the campaign’s responsiveness, or lack of responsiveness, when it became apparent that the initial approach was not working.329 He is also accountable, in concert with Robert Iger, for the decision to make the “doomsday” announcement on March 19, 2012, claiming a historic $200M write-down attributed to John Carter.

  What was he thinking?

  Much has been made that Ross didn’t have ownership of John Carter because it was Dick Cook’s baby, and to a certain extent that may have entered into it. But when Ross took over in October 2009, John Carter’s release date was 20 months away, set for June 8, 2012, and that was too far out to simply become “not my problem.” It seems much more likely that Ross considered it to be a problem, but not one that could be solved by pulling the plug since it was too close to being fully mounted, with a start date of January 2010.

  Apart from John Carter per se, there was also the issue of Ross’s understanding of his own mandate. He was given a strong directive by Iger to clean house and retool the Studio, bringing it more in line with the rest of Disney Corp and eliminating many of the aspects that made it unique within the larger organization. The studio was to become more of a distribution hub serving client producers, and less a content generator directly via in-house productions. John Carter was an in-house production, and although it had been produced by key Pixar talent (Stanton and producers Morris and Collins), it was not a Pixar film and thus John Lasseter, while a friend of the project, was not in the same position of Spielberg with Dreamworks, Feige with Marvel, or Bruckheimer with his films. John Carter did not have a champion or high-profile producer demanding focus and attention the way the other films did --- nor did it have a dedicated topflight marketing consultant working for it as the films with client producers did.