John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood

by Sellers, Michael D.

  Ross fired department heads liberally and, particularly in the case of marketing, brought in an outsider with a clear “shake things up” mandate. He made young producer Sean Bailey head of production and brought in MT Carney to take on the marketing position that was evolving into a coordination job as the marketing hub for Pixar, Dreamworks, Marvel, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, and Disney. In that context, Carney’s credentials as someone who knew marketing, and was particularly adept at digital and new media marketing, made sense to Ross.

  As the campaign unfolded, and failed to connect -- what was Ross thinking? All indications are that he eventually came to consider John Carter a Pixar vanity project which he was willing to let sink or swim largely on the shoulders of Andrew Stanton. He did not “light a fire” under anyone in marketing or otherwise communicate a sense of urgency or that “failure is not an option.” He had made the decision long ago, confirmed by Iger, to not “throw good money after bad” by unleashing the kind of all-out marketing campaign that, for example, The Avengers was to be the beneficiary of. He knew that, given John Carter’s budget, this decision all but doomed the release to failure unless Stanton pulled a rabbit out of the hat with a film that registered 90%++ with both critics and audiences. He knew this -- but felt the decision was justified in the larger overall scheme of things. In his view the marketing was adequate enough so that Stanton, if he had delivered a film with critic and audience approval in the 90’s, could have succeeded. In the end, Ross seems to have been thinking: This is Andrew Stanton’s baby and the entire existence of the project is an appeasement to Stanton, Lasseter and Pixar. We will give them enough support so that if they deliver a home run with the critics and fans, it will be a success. And if it falls short of that, well -- the studio had supported the film with a $250M production budget and $100M marketing spend. Any failure would be mainly on Stanton, not the studio.

  MT Carney

  What is she accountable for?

  MT Carney bears primary responsibility for the change of title from John Carter of Mars to John Carter, and shared responsibility for moving up the release date by three months into a March slot, as opposed to a June slot. She is responsible for deciding to handle John Carter herself, rather than bring in a consultant, even though she lacked experience and had a very full plate. She is responsible for the substandard level of effort that went into the John Carter campaign -- and thus for items such as the lameness of the Facebook, Twitter, and social media campaigns, the weakness of the website, and the low output of publicity. The failure of the campaign to react and respond when it became apparent that the creatives were not connect with the audience is technically her responsibility, although she was fired on January 8, 2012, sixty days before the release and thus was at the helm of marketing only until then.

  As to the disastrous creatives, there is less than total clarity on her role versus Andrew Stanton’s role in the major tone-setting creative decisions that led to the weak trailers, posters, and other materials that failed to capture the imagination of potential filmgoers. She clearly bears at least some of the responsibility for the judgments that are reflected in the materials that were produced.

  What was she thinking?

  It’s easy to imagine how Carney, a rising superstar in New York whose company Naked Communications had been highly successful and received accolades from all quarters, entered Hollywood filled with confidence that the skills that had served her so well up to that point, would serve her just as well in Hollywood.

  She understood on one level that movies were different from BMW’s or packaged goods -- but at the same time, basic principles were basic principles and everything she knew taught her that her skills as a brand strategist should work for movies as well as they had worked for other products. Indeed, in all likelihood she felt like she understood some things that the old school movie marketers didn’t understand, and could use that understanding to good effect.

  When she arrived at Disney, the projects for which she had responsibility were hurtling at her at breakneck speed, forcing her into what Sharon Waxman called a “baptism by fire.” Prince of Persia came first and opened weakly; then the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, imbued with Carney’s own tagline “It’s the coolest job ever,” flopped. Step UP 3D then underperformed; Secretariat performed weakly; You Again flopped; then Tangled did well, Tron: Legacy did a solid $400M worldwide; and Gnomeo and Juliet did $100M domestic. All of these were on Carney’s plate; and all of them were in the pipeline ahead of John Carter, demanding attention and focus at a time when Carney was trying to simultaneously implement staffing changes, philosophical changes, and changes in how things were done. John Carter did not have a Bruckheimer, Spielberg, or Feige demanding attention, and with all that was on her plate and her lack of experience, MT Carney did not immediately come to grips with John Carter or its issues.

  Until January 2011, John Carter was still scheduled for release in June 2012, after The Avengers. The decision, made in January 2011, to move John Carter forward to March 9, replacing Frankenweenie who would not be ready for a March release, was made with Carney’s concurrence and seems to have been the ringing of the bell that caused it to finally become, front and center, a focus of concern for her.

  She then became engaged in the planning that led up to the June/July 2011 launch of the teaser poster and trailer, but in that process she came to realize that Andrew Stanton was going to have a very significant say in the creative materials, and his ideas did not mesh well with hers. In the end, the materials that came out reflected an uneasy coordination between the studio marketing team, and the filmmaker. Carney surely felt that she was being blocked by Stanton from creating the materials she wanted to create for the film.

  More importantly, during the run-up to the June/July launch of the teaser materials, Carney became convinced that removing “of Mars” from the title was a key to achieving a positioning that would allow success occur. The decision to drop “of Mars” was “all MT Carney.” She believed it was the right choice -- a choice that would open up a wider demographic. That turned out to be a bad decision -- but she believed in it, and believed it would help the picture.

  In MT Carney’s case, there was another thread that mattered, increasingly as the campaign moved beyond the summer of 2011 and into the fall. By the fall of 2011 she had, on a personal level, made the decision that Hollywood was not the answer. She journeyed back to New York each weekend to be with her children, whom she adored. Her friends were in New York; her world was New York, and Hollywood was not responding to her insights, strategy, and style in a way that was psychologically or emotionally satisfying. She attempted to deal professionally with her responsibilities in Hollywood, including John Carter, but the writing was on the wall and her heart wasn’t in it.

  In the end, she was distracted much of the time, and she made some critical miscalculations based on her belief in an application of principles that just did not transfer to theatrical film marketing the way she thought they would.

  While it is easy to criticize Carney’s bad judgment calls and the outcome that ensued, her greater accountability would seem to be in simply failing to set up and implement a solid effort designed to generate buzz for John Carter. She cannot be expected to have attended to every detail of Facebook, Twitter, Websites and so on -- but she was hired in large part because of claimed familiarity with new media, yet by any reasonable metric the output of her John Carter team in the new media and publicity arenas was substandard (and this only refers to the low measurable output, and does not even address quality issues associated with that output.) It seems that the management task of simply keeping up with all the movies in the pipeline, John Carter included, proved overwhelming to her.330

  Andrew Stanton

  What is he accountable for?

  Stanton is unique among the five major players in that he clearly and irrefutability gave the film his all -- no one can realistically accuse Stanton of mailing in his performance or not giving the fi
lm his best shot. He clearly did that, and acknowledging that he made an all-out, good-conscience effort is a necessary preamble to any critique. He cared, and he gave it his best shot.

  With that established -- film-making is by its nature collaborative and a group effort -- but Andrew Stanton had virtually full creative control and was given ample budget support, so he must take responsibility for virtually all of the major creative decisions that led to a film being created that scored 52% with critics and 75-80% with audiences. These scores, while not the scintillating 90%++ percent ratings he had achieved with his previous two films, are not devastatingly bad and, had they been backed by a solid marketing campaign, could have been adequate to the task at hand. But lacking a solid marketing campaign, these results proved inadequate.

  There is also the matter of Stanton’s accountability for the certain aspects of the marketing. Stanton clearly had major responsibility for the first trailer and thus the first impression of the film. He espoused a “no-spoiler,” don’t-give-away-too-much philosophy that seems to have been adopted by Disney marketing -- whether because Stanton had the power to force it on them, or simply persuaded them of it is not clear. But at least some of the responsibility for what was perceived as “incoherence” in the trailers, for example, is traceable to Stanton’s often articulated concern that the materials leave much to the imagination.

  What was he thinking?

  Coming into the film, Stanton had shown a green thumb for every single project he had ever either directed, or been strongly associated with as a writer. He believed deeply that he recognized and understood patterns in storytelling that would allow him to achieve the key goal of “make me care,” whatever the story or medium. And why not?

  And it wasn’t that Stanton was an egoist who ignored collaborators. He understood and embraced the need for collaboration and he worked with collaborators to forge a consensus. He also believed the audience was intelligent, and could be relied upon to ingest meaning from what he presented them without having to be spoonfed.

  He believed that Burroughs had created a wonderful universe that had inspired him enormously as a teen, and he wanted to recreate that and share it. But he didn’t fully believe in the other aspects of Burroughs storytelling prowess. He didn’t see Burroughs as having any unique gifts when it came to creating a compelling hero-protagonist, and he felt he could improve on what Burroughs had given. Moreover, he believed that the improvements he planned were precisely the kind of updates that were needed in order to “freshen up” the 100 year old, badly strip-mined material. He did not drill deeply into Burroughs’ genius but rather, like so many before him, strip-mined what he could and then let his own imagination take over.

  He also had, for many years, harbored an idea of how to start the movie, and that was on Barsoom, in the council chambers. He had shared that idea for an opening with Robert Rodriguez as far back as the early 2000s. He remained committed to that opening, even when the Brain Trust screening in December 2010 produced feedback that it might not be working, and that following Burroughs’ approach of revealing Barsoom through John Carter’s experience of it might work better. He truly felt that was bad advice - one of the few pieces of advice from the Brain Trust that he would reject out of hand.

  For the critical opening scenes of the movie, he believed that audiences would, like a child, sense that all they needed to take from the opening prologue on Mars was that there were two forces fighting one another, and a third force had entered it, providing a lethal, game changing weapon to one of them.

  And he was right to a large extent, as far as the audiences were concerned. There is little indication that the “confusing opening” was a problem for theater goers. The general audience accepted this in much the manner that Stanton anticipated. The critics, however, did not, and the 52% “Rotten” critics score is largely attributable to this, and to other aspect of the film that flowed from this. Stanton and the film took a pounding from the critics on the charge of “confusing and unengaging” -- a charge that more than anything else can be traced to issues with the opening sequences, and the amount of Barsoomian politics and exposition that was offered up in large doses, particularly near the beginning of the film. A film must generate a “buy-in” moment early on, in order for the audience to become engaged and remain engaged. The confusing opening resulted in many critics never having such a moment, and their view of the remainder of the film was often colored by their expressed irritation with the confusing opening.

  Finally, Stanton thought he was going to get a trilogy and he trusted in that, structuring the first film in a way that provided maximum payoff over the projected three film series, but which may have lessened the payoff and narrative efficiency of the first film.

  What Would Walt Disney Think?

  The Walt Disney Company today is nine decades removed from the company that Walt Disney and his brother Roy started in 1923 as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio with a series of “Alice in Wonderland” cartoons made under contract to film distributor Margaret J. Winkler. Today’s Disney is the world’s largest media conglomerate in terms of revenue. Many of the decisions and actions taken by Disney principals in the case of John Carter reflect those realities.

  What would Walt Disney think?

  In speaking of his approach to any project, Walt said:331

  "When we consider a project, we really study it--not just the surface idea, but everything about it. And when we go into that new project, we believe in it all the way. We have confidence in our ability to do it right. And we work hard to do the best possible job."

  Who among the participants in John Carter lived up to the legacy of those words? Who did not?

  Former Studio head Dick Cook and all of those involved in the production of the film itself seem to have acted in a manner consistent with Walt Disney’s approach. It is possible to criticize choices made by Andrew Stanton, and critics have done just that, but no one has accused Stanton or any of the filmmakers of giving it anything less than their best shot. The filmmakers “worked hard to do the best possible job.”

  Can the same be said of the executives who set the policy regarding how the film would be brought into the marketplace, or the marketers who implemented that policy?

  When we go into a project, we believe in it all the way.

  Did Bob Iger, Rich Ross, and MT Carney act in a manner consistent with Walt’s values? Or were the values that determined their actions radically different from those espoused by the founder of the company they represent?

  In May 2012 Bob Iger was interviewed by Carol Massar of Bloomberg News and had this to say about John Carter:332

  Iger: They’re all our babies and we root for all of them to do well…we’re relatively realistic about the prospects of our film when we see enough of each film…I mean, you get a good sense if you’ve been in the business long enough whether something is going to do well or not, before it comes out, research aside — it’s more…it’s an instinct. There was a point before Carter came out that I had a very strong sense that it was going to be very challenging….

  Massar: But at that point you were just too way in, right? you have to run with it?

  Iger: Yes. We weren’t going to not distribute it. Nor did we really run away from supporting it fully because I felt that given the size of the investment, we owed it to ourselves, to at least give it the shot that it deserved.

  Massar: And you never know…

  Iger: No, you never know…but we had a strong sense…I was very worried about it … not that I wasn’t cheering for it …but I was worried about it.

  Iger’s comments to Massar are revealing on a number of levels. What, for example, is meant by: “When we see enough of a film...”?

  It would seem that this could only refer to the December 2010 screening of the 170 minute work-in-progress by Disney studio executives. Yet less than a month later, in January 2011, the decision was made to accelerate the opening by three months. Why accelerate the releas
e date of a film that you feel has problems and which represents a “tentpole” investment? Why not hold to the original date, or even delay that date if necessary so as to “get it right”?

  What would Walt have done?

  “We work hard to do the best possible job.”

  MT Carney, brought in under Rich Ross as the head of marketing in part because she was believed to have expertise in new media, produced a digital marketing campaign whose output on critical platforms Facebook and Twitter was so minimal that it could have been accomplished by one intern working 5 hours a week, and which stood in stark contrast to the output of competitors like The Hunger Games and even Disney stablemate The Avengers.

  How does one reconcile such a cataclysmic failure of simple effort with the reality of a $250M production investment that by its very nature meant that only an all-out effort, producing one of the best outcomes ever for a March release, could yield success?

  For John Carter to be considered a success, a domestic gross of $200M would be needed, and in the history of Hollywood only 5 films released in January through April had ever grossed that much -- The Passion of the Christ, Alice In Wonderland, How to Train Your Dragon, 300, and Fast Five. The task and stakes were clear, and yet simply on the matter of effort, the shortcomings are equally clear. Why?