Pixar’s record hasn’t been perfect for great movies, but they’ve certainly had a better track record than most.
The studio also had incredible success at the box office, even when its last movie, Cars 2, got dismal reviews. Now Pixar’s first live action film, John Carter is going to be released in March, and it should be another hit on their roll, right?
Well, a report on TheWrap claims that Carter, which costs approximately $250 million, “may be the biggest studio gamble since Avatar.”
T hat may be stretching it a bit, as Avatar was an unprecedented roll of the dice, but $250 million certainly isn’t chickenfeed, there’ve been reshoots, and Disney also just lost their President of Marketing right when the movie needs a big push with the public.
This report also claims Carter’s going to require a huge marketing budget, say an extra $120 million, and director Andrew Stanton (Wall-E, Finding Nemo) also said the movie will have to make $700 million if it’s going to have a sequel. Fortunately, the New Yorker recently confirmed the film received 75% “good” and “excellent” scores in test screenings.
It is definitely all new territory for Pixar to do a live action film, but again, their track record outshines most, even if some studio executives feel it’s lunatic to greenlight a movie like this with anyone other than say James Cameron or Steven Spielberg. And although there’s no big stars in it, with Pixar their brand of wonder is usually the star, so I would definitely say don’t count Pixar out on this one.
Jon Favreau was originally going to direct John Carter, and as he told the site io9, “I’m [in] the chain of filmmakers who have passed the torch for a 100 years on this one. I’m really proud that somebody is doing it right. And seeing the scale of it, I’m really glad it’s not me. It’s a huge movie, a huge movie.”
