JOHN CARTER Expected to Tank
You’ve undoubtedly seen a trailer or two for John Carter, Disney’s $250 million 3-D sci-fi epic, opening on March 9.
Not that the heavy promotion matters; the Daily Beast reports that it’s expected to tank at the box office.
One of the problems is that people can’t grasp what it’s about, even though a new trailer, which arrived this week, is less murky than the others (two fans were so disgusted with the SuperBowl trailer, that they pieced together their own from available clips).
Junot Diaz might have helped clear up some of the questions; he’s written the introduction to the Library of America version of A Princess of Mars, the Edgar Rice Burroughs’s book the film is based on.
Library of America? The folks whod do “authoritative texts of great American writing…printed on premium acid-free paper”? Yes, them.
Unfortunately, however, the book won’t be available until after the movie releases.
Meanwhile, we have just this quote from Diaz to go on; “A Princess of Mars is singularly important… in that it innovated the grammar for the American version of the lost world romance.”
Another major author is taken with the book; Michael Chabon worked the screenplay.
For more tie-ins, go to our listing of Upcoming Movies — with Tie-ins
Not that you really need to stock up.
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March 1st, 2012 at 3:01 pm
The New Yorker had a profile of the “John Carter” director Andrew Stanton in October of 2011 — the article made it sound like the movie might actually be quite popular, as the early focus groups apparently LURRVED it. Maybe it’s not yet time to ring the death knells that Daily Beast is reporting?