And yet, as I've mentioned several times already, Hollywood and Disney only get a small percentage of the overseas revenue due to tariffs and other taxes.
It's one of the mysteries of accounting at the Hollywood studios, as we have watched budgets balloon bigger and bigger for decades - how do they make money from their films? Grosses of the biggest hits may be up at well, thanks to inflation, but the ratio of dollars spent to dollars earned just gets smaller and smaller.
Titanic and Avatar style grosses were the norm during the days of the original Star Wars trilogy, the Bruckheimer /Simpson films of the 1980's - where your films would gross $10-15 dollars for every dollar you spent. (The first Star Wars and E.T. - they returned about $40 dollars for every dollar spent in their budget.) Now, grossing as little as $2-3 dollars for every dollar you spend can get you declared a blockbuster hit; the average Harry Potter film grossed $4-10 dollars for every dollar spent on them. Are there just that many more platforms to get revenues from films? From DVDs to Blu-rays to direct downloads to your personal iPad etc? The days of networks spending big money to get the TV premiere of a film; that doesn't exist anymore.
Or have the studios just isolated themselves successfully by being part of larger media empires, where dollars can be spread around creatively? Disney made a financial declaration on John Carter because it was the end of a financial quarter and they had to report to their board. They guessed at an estimate because corporate protocol demanded they do. But they are a mega corporation of theme parks, TV station ownership, toy company and film production house. Who knows how they truly evaluate success.
The days when a single film can sink a studio (like Heaven's Gate did to United Artists) seem to be a thing of the past, with all the layers studios have added to their production mechanisms. It's also unfortunately led to a lack of creative risk-taking for the most part, as we are bombarded with more remakes and sequels.
John Carter, at least, was more creative risk taking than the average mega project. Like Peter Travers of Rolling Stone observed, it is actually admirable it's not a project of cynicism, but trying to go back to giving audiences a sense of retro, old style wonder.
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"I'm not smart so much as I am not dumb." - Harlan Ellison
"The Daemon lied with every breath. It could not help itself but to deceive and dismay, to riddle and ruin. The more we conversed, the closer I drew to one singularly ineluctable fact: I would gain no wisdom here."
Last edited by Tzeentch on Mar 30th, 2012 at 06:05 PM
Considering how much Hollywood has gotten dependent on foreign box office for the biggest & most expensive films, I think the argument the percentage of overseas revenue they get is much smaller than in North America is specious.
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The IMDb board on John Carter is sad. Fanboys who makes the crappiest justification for how John Carter can still make money and the trolls for trying to milk that as long as they can, effectively bringing down the quality of the board.
Given that I'm a fan of Andrew Stanton, I may watch it when it comes out on DVD/Blu-Ray, but I don't have any desire to see it in theaters.
I've quit looking at the North American box office numbers and I'm just looking at the international numbers. Found how much calmer I could be, when I wasn't looking all over the internet to make arguments. Lol.
Had enough of the media fawning over The Hunger Games(My friend saw it last weekend, said it was Meh. Like Battle Royale with no teeth.)
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"I'm not smart so much as I am not dumb." - Harlan Ellison
You know, Disney's relationship with PIXAR is hugely important, and Andrew Stanton is one of the high up braintrusts there. For all the billions of dollars PIXAR has earned for Disney, I wonder if they indulged him in making John Carter just to keep the relationships good. They owed PIXAR so much, they gave him and his friends a giant sandbox to play in to make this feature. Would they do it again...?
The Gods Of Mars has a challenging storyline, with him taking on the Therns and their false religion on Barsoom.
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"I'm not smart so much as I am not dumb." - Harlan Ellison
Yeah, if you search back through this thread I read in an interview that he's already getting a jump on writing the sequel, cuz it's a labor of love for him and Disney was kind of taking a leap of faith on it and going ahead and assuming that it would do well.. and well...
Which is why Disney shouldn't be involved!! Honestly, as much as I'd like to see an adaptation of the second book, I think I'd rather see it not happen, than have it be Disney and this kind of writing... It makes me sad to say that..
I think if a continuation does happen, Paramount buys the rights back from Disney and does it. They have been the two companies most active on the John Carter mythos the past several years.
Disney stopped with the Narnia series after just two films, and Fox took over after that.
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"I'm not smart so much as I am not dumb." - Harlan Ellison
Proof that no one cares about overseas sales. 200 million dollar loss. Hooooly shit. Dude's lucky Disney didn't take some of that out of his paycheck.
__________________
"The Daemon lied with every breath. It could not help itself but to deceive and dismay, to riddle and ruin. The more we conversed, the closer I drew to one singularly ineluctable fact: I would gain no wisdom here."
KMC Community Forums
Mar 29th, 2012 04:47 AM
Honestly, as much as I'd like to see an adaptation of the second book, I think I'd rather see it not happen, than have it be Disney and this kind of writing... 
It makes me sad to say that.. 
