Just last week we were saying John Carter may lose as much as $165 million for parent company Disney. To put that in context, the record for largest loss on a single film is held by Cutthroat Island (1995) starring Geena Davis, a film which lost an inflation-adjusted $147 million and ultimately bankrupted Carolco Pictures. So a $165 million loss seems high, right? Now we must admit we were wrong. Yesterday Disney released a statement about how much money they actually expect to lose: $200 million. OH SNAP.
In light of the theatrical performance of John Carter ($184 million global box office), we expect the film to generate an operating loss of approximately $200 million during our second fiscal quarter ending March 31. As a result, our current expectation is that the Studio segment will have an operating loss of between $80 and $120 million for the second quarter. As we look forward to the second half of the year, we are excited about the upcoming releases of The Avengers and Brave, which we believe have tremendous potential to drive value for the Studio and the rest of the company. [official Disney release via Deadline]
As Blastr points out, the film needed to make about $600 million worldwide to recoup its costs after splitting ticket costs with theaters. That $200 million shortfall is enough to make thirteen movies with the same budget as Chronicle ($15 million budget, $116 million grossed worldwide so far). So, yeah, John Carter bombed bigger than anything, is the point we’re making. As much as I wanted to see an Edgar Rice Burroughs sci-fi adaptation make mad cash, this wasn’t the case.
Deadline reports that $200 million loss far exceeds the analyst forecasts of a $100 million to $150 million loss. In addition, Disney is expected to lose as much as $120 million this quarter compared to the previous estimates of a $37 million quarterly deficit. Nonetheless, Disney shares only dropped about 1% in after-hours trading since the announcement, probably because Disney’s film department only accounts for about 7% of the company’s profits. The other 93 percent? Lunatics looking for hidden Mickeys.
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No, the other 93% is pin traders at the parks.
Oh course what they don’t tell you is that they have a dumb corporation set up to absorb the loss and quietly fold it back into the company for like half the damages (or something like that). Hollywood’s always been pretty shady about how much they lose/make, and they’ve got so many accounting tricks, Goldman and Sachs CEOs think they should dial it down.
This seems like a “Producers” set up to me – I’m not a conspiracy theorist by any means, but something just seems fishy about this to me. I’m sure I’ll be accused of being a “JC” fanboy who’s butt-hurt over a movie he likes that is flopping big time, but I honestly don’t see things adding up – even using creative Hollywood accounting. The damn movie was only out 10 days before Disney basically has said, “Yeah it’s over.” And I don’t buy a $100 million advertising budget. If you watched any ABC show On Demand back when the Muppet movie came out, they had a commercial for that EVERY DAMNED TIME during the commercial break. I was prepared to have a “John Carter” spot for that amount of time too – especially in light of the advance hand-wring over its production cost, but you maybe had one commercial over the entirety of the show. They couldn’t even advertise on their own goddamned network? I can understand the movie just not bringing in the masses – from what they could tell, it was just more of the same stuff, and no one gives a shit if it was based on the property that spawned all of the movies that ripped it off. Hell, I even understand the gleeful feeling critics and bloggers have when it was announced it was going to tank – it’s a better story that way, right? What I don’t understand is Disney waving the white flag so early – it’s almost like they were eager to announce that they really got screwed over it – and the woeful lack of merchandising and marketing from a company that is unparalleled in doing just that.
Advertising during an OnDemand showing costs a lot less than advertising on real TV, like during the Super Bowl.
“Loss” my ass. 20 years from now, this film will have turned a profit. This is going to be the “Superman Returns” loss leader that Disney is going to fold into other budgets to avoid paying out net contracts. “Oh, sorry, the last 6 Pixar movies didn’t turn a profit.”