With troubled buzz going around the ‘Net, Disney’s John Carter has seemed an iffy proposition lately, even though the studio has one of the best track records in the biz.
Yes, it’s got an enormous budget, and so it’s definitely a gamble, and now reports have come in that John Carter’s “tracking,” or interest and awareness in the film, isn’t hot right before its release.
Now director Andrew Stanton has gone on the offensive about the film’s reported budget problems, with him telling Movieline, “I want to go completely on record that I literally was on budget and on time the entire shoot. Disney is so completely psyched that I stayed on budget and on time the entire shoot.”
Stanton added, “Disney is so completely psyched that I stayed on budget and on time that they let me have a longer reshoot because I was such a good citizen, so I find it ironic that we’re being accused of the opposite.” (Carter went through two reshoots, one in April 2011, and another that August.)
Stanton also told Wired, “I’ve been a fan of the books my whole life, hoping to see somebody make a movie of them. If we do it right, hopefully it will kick off a series.”
The producer of John Carter, Lindsey Collins, also confirmed that it was a learning process going from animation to live action. But Stanton certainly knows the animation process, which came in handy for a movie with so much CGI. Still, Stanton told Wired, “I’ve always wondered how the hell you make a live-action movie and have it be good.”
And the site BestMoviesEverNews also reported that Disney has been “blitz[ing] out more clips” because they’re worried about the tracking reports. “If this one fails,” the site writes, “you can be sure Disney will either be blaming online piracy or [Former Disney executive] Dick Cook who had this set up before leaving the Mouse Trap.
