10 Insanely Hyped Movies That Flopped HARD
6. John Carter
There's a good reason why Disney was willing to plough a whopping $263 million into John Carter. Legendary sci-fi writer Edgar Rice Burroughs posthumously provided the source material, there was an Oscar-winning filmmaker at the helm (Finding Nemo's Andrew Stanton), and a strong supporting cast of seasoned actors on side.
On Paper, John Carter was loaded with potential, but what the Mouse House clearly believed was the next Star Wars ended up having more in common with Battlefield Earth. To be specific, it lost the studio a boatload of money, over $100 million.
A critical panning didn't help convince audiences that they should be as excited about the film as Disney was, and as a result, it failed to set the box office ablaze. When John Carter disappeared from cinemas, so too did the studio's franchise plans.
Disney's ambitions to launch the next Star Wars didn't quite come to fruition, so it did the next best thing that same year: buy the Star Wars franchise.