12 Things That Were Really To Blame For Hollywood's Biggest F*ck Ups

4. John Carter Had Already Been Done

One of the biggest €“ but maybe least surprising €“ box-office flops in recent memory was Disney's multi-million dollar gamble John Carter. Which sounds like the name of a boring legal drama or something, but was in fact a huge-budget sci-fi epic based on stories by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, originally titled John Carter Of Mars €“ and that change in title might have been part of the reason it failed so much. There was also the issue of it being Andrew Stanton's first live-action film, having previously directed Pixar hits WALL-E and Finding Nemo; that naivety may have lead to the ridiculously bloated budget John Carter eventually reached which, reportedly, would've necessitated it making "$600 million to break even...a height reached by only 63 films in the history of moviemaking". Too much money spent on making the film and not enough spent on marketing it €“ and seriously, cutting the title down to John Carter seemed like a particularly devastating misstep €“ were enough to totally sink the movie. The real reason for a f*ck up on this level, however, is one that Stanton was sort of aware of, albeit it unconsciously. Part of his assertion was that John Carter was well-known and beloved character, meaning they didn't have to spend much on marketing €“ everyone knew who this guy was! Well, Stanton was half-right. The public at large is relatively ignorant to John Carter Of Mars and the pulp novels which spawned him, but they are aware of the many, many things that the original series inspired. Elements of Burroughs' books reappeared in the works of sci-fi authors Ray Bradbury, Arthur C Clarke and Robert A Heinlein, and plot points were stolen wholesale for every big space-based movie from Star Wars to Avatar. So, really, audiences had already seen John Carter, years before it even came out. It wasn't giving them anything new.