i would imagine there's a lot of arguments between bigwigs about how much advertising to do, what advertising was right
the word on the street has been that a lot of people did not realize it was coming out now
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RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
I doubt it was arguing
Birds of Prey released 4 days after the Super Bowl, but WB didn't buy any ads for it during the game
WB wanted it to die. I thought it may be due to being a bad movie, but it's reviewing well and positive word of mouth is out there. So must be some other reason WB executives were keen to have it fail
Can't quite think of what makes this movie different from the rest of the DC properties they didn't sandbag tho....
Well there is the John Carter of Mars film thing, where a Disney exec didn't like it or want it made, but got overridden, and he was in charge of marketing and decided just to...not. He was hoping to be vindicated in his idea that the movie shouldn't be made, but it was a self fulfilling prophesy since it had next to 0 marketing.
What happened with John Carter is that the director, Andrew Stanton, was coming off of some of Disney's biggest hits ever with Pixar and essentially had a blank check and made the poor assumption that everyone was as knowledgeable and excited about John Carter of Mars as he was so the marketing did nothing to try and explain or sell it to audiences.
There are interviews where he said he considered JCoM as big of a cultural touchstone as, like, Frankenstein and Batman.
+16
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RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
What happened with John Carter is that the director, Andrew Stanton, was coming off of some of Disney's biggest hits ever with Pixar and essentially had a blank check and made the poor assumption that everyone was as knowledgeable and excited about John Carter of Mars as he was so the marketing did nothing to try and explain or sell it to audiences.
There are interviews where he said he considered JCoM as big of a cultural touchstone as, like, Frankenstein and Batman.
I feel bad for the dude because I have definitely been in the place of thinking something is super cool and being like "wait, everyone isn't also into this?"
What happened with John Carter is that the director, Andrew Stanton, was coming off of some of Disney's biggest hits ever with Pixar and essentially had a blank check and made the poor assumption that everyone was as knowledgeable and excited about John Carter of Mars as he was so the marketing did nothing to try and explain or sell it to audiences.
There are interviews where he said he considered JCoM as big of a cultural touchstone as, like, Frankenstein and Batman.
I feel bad for the dude because I have definitely been in the place of thinking something is super cool and being like "wait, everyone isn't also into this?"
Stanton (who also nixed all mentions of his Pixar work in the teaser for fear that people would think this film was for little kids) was working from the belief that John Carter was still as universally iconic a figure to people as Dracula, Luke Skywalker, or Tarzan. “It was my Harry Potter,” he said during an interview at Google last week that was streamed live on YouTube. “All I ever wanted when I read that book was to believe it.” He believed that audiences would gasp in delight at John Carter’s very appearance in much the same way that a Batman teaser might only need to flash the Bat Signal. As such, he felt that the very first John Carter trailer needed only to intrigue, not explicate. “To him, it was the most important sci-fi movie of all time,” recounts one Disney marketing insider present for the pitched battles. “He could see no idea in which someone didn’t know who John Carter of Mars was. But it’s not Frankenstein; it’s not Sherlock Holmes. Nobody cares. People don’t say, ‘I know what I’ll be for Halloween! I’ll be John Carter!’”
I'm sure everyone had a book series like that as a kid, I know I did!
Bruce Coville's Aliens Ate My Homework kids sci fi series was like the biggest shit in the world to me, and I know people have read them but I seriously thought it was like
I am thrilled to announce that with the special collaboration of Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures, we have begun principal photography on our $200m adaptation of the legendary novel
mark your calendars for December 25th, 2021, because on that day we are all MANIAC MAGEE
What happened with John Carter is that the director, Andrew Stanton, was coming off of some of Disney's biggest hits ever with Pixar and essentially had a blank check and made the poor assumption that everyone was as knowledgeable and excited about John Carter of Mars as he was so the marketing did nothing to try and explain or sell it to audiences.
There are interviews where he said he considered JCoM as big of a cultural touchstone as, like, Frankenstein and Batman.
Hmm looking it up I can no longer find the articles that I had bookmarked about this (I use to bookmark like everything for some reason) they are all broken links now, so perhaps you are right and I took the internet rumor bait. My bad.
That movie was still more enjoyable then it gets credit for.
RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
Yeah John Carter was a cultural touchstone in the sci fi/fantasy world of yesteryear. But the genre masters inspired by John Carter of Mars are barely read themselves these days.
On the wikipedia page it seems like it was an inspiration for a lot of more famous stuff
Lovecraft, Robert e Howard, ray Bradbury all noted it as an influence
Also Grey Ghost the series is about 20 years older than conan
So we have a Hydrox situation
Yeah John Carter is a big deal in a few very specific circles (it was a huge influence on Bradbury especially, but you can also see it really strong with Clark Ashton Smith, of that whole crowd)
I've always seen it as around the same as like, maybe one of Howard's characters that hasn't had a highly successful movie made about him or something
You know, a Solomon Kane or a Kull of Atlantis or what have you
Which sort of follows, given the very direct comparison that you could make to Tarzan there
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GustavFriend of GoatsSomewhere in the OzarksRegistered Userregular
edited February 2020
If John Carter cut to having like one intro prologue instead of three or four I think the movie would jump from 'hey that's pretty good!' to 'hot damn this is great'
John Carter of Mars was also in the second or third volume of The League of Extraordinarily Gentlemen comics, somewhere around 2000
(Fuck)
It was basically a cameo though, the Martians from those books were fighting the tripod Martians from War of the Worlds
Yup first issue of volume two. The War of the Worlds Martians were aliens from another solar system invading Barsoom if I recall correctly. And most of the issue is in a fictional martian language.
I opted to do a mix between heroes and villains given the overall mercurial alliances of the Greek gods. Also because the idea of Ares being anyone other than Ares was unthinkable.
Straightzi on
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Werewolf2000adSuckers, I know exactly what went wrong.Registered Userregular
The name was stupid, they buried their lead character at the end of 9 words. Like The Shawshank Redemption apparently burned audiences so The Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of one Harley Quinn was never going to be anything more than a gimmick.
"the name of a book, composition, or other artistic work."
No they're not. It's the primary identifier of your film. For as long as I've been hearing about that film I've just been referring to it as the Harley Quinn film. Having such an unwieldy name does have an evidential basis for impacting a film's success because it's how many people are going to initially judge the film.
Like, the point of a title is to attract an audience
They thought this would be more eyecatching than Harley Quinn & The Birds Of Prey
But that title is also gimmickey because its just listing the person you think people want most first
I don't get the complaint
I literally just said that when analyzed, the simple title of The Shawshank Redemption was deemed to be one of the things that worked against it at the Box Office. It's not a complaint, it was a statement of fact that the name can impact the film. The unwieldly title buried their most important character at the end.
"the name of a book, composition, or other artistic work."
No they're not. It's the primary identifier of your film. For as long as I've been hearing about that film I've just been referring to it as the Harley Quinn film. Having such an unwieldy name does have an evidential basis for impacting a film's success because it's how many people are going to initially judge the film.
gim·mick
/ˈɡimik/
noun
plural noun: gimmicks
a trick or device intended to attract attention, publicity, or business
The point of the title is to get people to look at the movie
They thought a big flashy one would be better
Maybe they were wrong, but that doesn't make it stupid or somehow invalid
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Steam // Secret Satan
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the word on the street has been that a lot of people did not realize it was coming out now
Birds of Prey released 4 days after the Super Bowl, but WB didn't buy any ads for it during the game
WB wanted it to die. I thought it may be due to being a bad movie, but it's reviewing well and positive word of mouth is out there. So must be some other reason WB executives were keen to have it fail
Can't quite think of what makes this movie different from the rest of the DC properties they didn't sandbag tho....
The exec retired shortly after.
What happened with John Carter is that the director, Andrew Stanton, was coming off of some of Disney's biggest hits ever with Pixar and essentially had a blank check and made the poor assumption that everyone was as knowledgeable and excited about John Carter of Mars as he was so the marketing did nothing to try and explain or sell it to audiences.
There are interviews where he said he considered JCoM as big of a cultural touchstone as, like, Frankenstein and Batman.
Movies that flop don't lose studios money
I feel bad for the dude because I have definitely been in the place of thinking something is super cool and being like "wait, everyone isn't also into this?"
But also
You need to do the research, my guy!
Here's the article if people are curious
https://www.vulture.com/2012/03/john-carter-doomed-by-first-trailer.html
And the most relavant bit
I'm not sure he ever was
I've read those books. They're knockoff Conan the Barbarian in space. They're fun! But I don't think they ever hit the heights he thinks they did
Bruce Coville's Aliens Ate My Homework kids sci fi series was like the biggest shit in the world to me, and I know people have read them but I seriously thought it was like
A cultural touchstone
mark your calendars for December 25th, 2021, because on that day we are all MANIAC MAGEE
Hmm looking it up I can no longer find the articles that I had bookmarked about this (I use to bookmark like everything for some reason) they are all broken links now, so perhaps you are right and I took the internet rumor bait. My bad.
That movie was still more enjoyable then it gets credit for.
I don't know what the numbers are on those comics but I can tell you what they are on any comics featuring John: zero
Lovecraft, Robert e Howard, ray Bradbury all noted it as an influence
Also @Grey Ghost the series is about 20 years older than conan
So we have a Hydrox situation
Hell, I might watch it tonight! I think it is on Disney+
Yeah John Carter is a big deal in a few very specific circles (it was a huge influence on Bradbury especially, but you can also see it really strong with Clark Ashton Smith, of that whole crowd)
I've always seen it as around the same as like, maybe one of Howard's characters that hasn't had a highly successful movie made about him or something
You know, a Solomon Kane or a Kull of Atlantis or what have you
Which sort of follows, given the very direct comparison that you could make to Tarzan there
(Fuck)
It was basically a cameo though, the Martians from those books were fighting the tripod Martians from War of the Worlds
Yup first issue of volume two. The War of the Worlds Martians were aliens from another solar system invading Barsoom if I recall correctly. And most of the issue is in a fictional martian language.
Mmmhm.
Announcement tomorrow
must we?
(apparently.)
What about like...The Batman who is.
Batman is Hades, Wonder Woman is Athena, Superman is Apollo, that sort of thing
Edit: Kept thinking
Hera - Amanda Waller
Poseidon - Aquaman
Demeter - Poison Ivy
Athena - Wonder Woman
Apollo - Superman
Artemis - Vixen
Ares - Ares
Aphrodite - Star Sapphire
Hephaestus - Cyborg
Hermes - Flash
Hestia - Starfire
Dionysus - Bizarro
Hades - Batman
I opted to do a mix between heroes and villains given the overall mercurial alliances of the Greek gods. Also because the idea of Ares being anyone other than Ares was unthinkable.
EVERYBODY WANTS TO SIT IN THE BIG CHAIR, MEG!
Looks more like dirt and people crawling out to me
The name was stupid, they buried their lead character at the end of 9 words. Like The Shawshank Redemption apparently burned audiences so The Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of one Harley Quinn was never going to be anything more than a gimmick.
literally, by definition
They thought this would be more eyecatching than Harley Quinn & The Birds Of Prey
But that title is also gimmickey because its just listing the person you think people want most first
I don't get the complaint
"the name of a book, composition, or other artistic work."
No they're not. It's the primary identifier of your film. For as long as I've been hearing about that film I've just been referring to it as the Harley Quinn film. Having such an unwieldy name does have an evidential basis for impacting a film's success because it's how many people are going to initially judge the film.
I literally just said that when analyzed, the simple title of The Shawshank Redemption was deemed to be one of the things that worked against it at the Box Office. It's not a complaint, it was a statement of fact that the name can impact the film. The unwieldly title buried their most important character at the end.
gim·mick
/ˈɡimik/
noun
plural noun: gimmicks
a trick or device intended to attract attention, publicity, or business
The point of the title is to get people to look at the movie
They thought a big flashy one would be better
Maybe they were wrong, but that doesn't make it stupid or somehow invalid