Still Not Good News for 'John Carter' Movie

Once already, it's been noted that John Carter from Disney is in a bit of predicted trouble as the movie wasn't tracking well.  And now the latest news is that the studio has downgraded their expected take of the movie down from $30 million to $25 million for its opening weekend.

Disney's marketing company said that despite the increased marketing, usually customer anticipation goes up, but in this case, it remained flat.  It's not even tracking well in foreign territories.

I was amazed to find out that Disney secured the rights to John Carter back in the 80's, but they could not seem to get the project off the ground, after a number of attempts.

The article that talks about the soft movie tracking goes on to touch no Disney's re-concentrated focus away from live-action movies and focus on projects they know will be profitable.  They quote the waning DVD market,

"melting ice cube of the DVD business," he said, has caused the studio to focus its investments on potential franchise films that could also be exploited by its television networks, consumer products group and theme parks.

Disney seems to fully expect to bit the bullet on this movie that cost them an estimated $700 million to make and market.


First impressions seem to count, because the first few movie trailers that came out had no real cohesion or something in them that made us think the movie was going to be any good.


But then a fan-made movie trailer came out that dusted anything Disney had put out and I started reconsidering the movie.  Then their latest marketing release of the 10-minute preview clip seemed to show some good writing and decent humor and such.

I'm sure the fans of the 100-year-old franchise of John Carter of Mars will probably enjoy the movie.  I hope.  We'll see come this Friday when John Carter comes out in theaters on March 9th, 2012.
  
[LA Times: John Carter not tracking well]
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