Production Budget: $150,000,000 Worldwide Gross: $38,992,758 Estimated Losses: $130,503,621 Starting with 2004's The Polar Express, Academy Award winning director Robert Zemeckis spent several years focusing on making motion capture animated movies. That ended in 2011 when Zemeckis produced Mars Needs Moms, a motion capture film about Martians abducting Earths mothers which was directed by otherwise successful animation director Simon Wells. A major issue came up when producers decided that Seth Green, who played the motion capture for the main character, had too deep of a voice to convincingly play a child (his character's voice was dubbed over by a pre-teen actor). When Mars Needs Moms was released, many remarked that the animation, like that in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, was too creepy. The bad word of mouth helped contribute to Mars Needs Moms only grossing $6.8 million in its opening weekend in the U.S., which was a huge embarrassment considering it was an animated film released by Disney. It is the only animated film released by Disney to ever lose more than $100 million (though 2002's Treasure Planet came close). The failure resulted in the shuttering of Zemeckis' ImageMovers Digital studio and cancelled Zemeckis' planned motion capture version of The Beatles' Yellow Submarine. Zemeckis has been shooting live-action films ever since, starting with 2012's Flight.
Chris McKittrick is a published author of fiction and non-fiction and has spoken about film and comic books at conferences across the United States. In addition to his work at WhatCulture!, he is a regular contributor to CreativeScreenwriting.com, MovieBuzzers.com, and DailyActor.com, a website focused on acting in all media. For more information, visit his website at http://www.chrismckit.com.
