10 Movies With INSANE Budgets (That Didn't Pay Off)

Edgar Rice Burroughs is best known for his Tarzan books, but that's thanks to his adaptation into film, television, video games, and pretty much every other form of media over the years. Another popular character in Burroughs' bibliography is John Carter, but adapting him to film hasn't been easy.

A real attempt at doing so was finally undertaken by Walt Disney Studios in 2012, but that investment proved to be incredibly unwise as the movie absolutely bombed at the box office. With production costs of an estimated $263 million coupled with marketing, the movie ended up costing the studio $350 million.

While it had a decent box office showing of $284 million, the overall costs to the studio ended up with a $200 million loss. At that time, it was one of the most expensive films ever made, and subsequently, one of the biggest financial disasters of all time for a movie studio. Much of the cost in making the movie revolved around the building of elaborate sets, post-production effects, and the cost of renewing the screen rights from Burroughs' estate, which was the result of the project stopping and starting so many times over the decades.

There were plans for two sequels to make a trilogy, but the damage done by the film's failure ended up cancelling those. The disaster resulted in the resignation of Rich Ross, the former head of Walt Disney Studios, and a complete overhaul of how Disney Studios managed their live-action movies moving forward.