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Box Office
Weekend Estimate
March 16-18, 2012 (*millions)
FILM GROSS/CUMULATIVE TOTAL
1 21 Jump Street (2012) $35M/$35M
2 Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax (2012) $22.8M/$158M
3 John Carter (2012) $13.5M/$53.2M
4 Project X (2012) $4M/$48.1M
5 A Thousand Words (2012) $3.75M/$12.1M
6 Act of Valor (2012) $3.68M/$62.4M
7 Safe House (2012) $2.76M/$120M
8 Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012) $2.46M/$95.1M
9 Casa de mi Padre (2012) $2.2M/$2.2M
10 This Means War (2012) $2.12M/$50.5M
Projects Announced
So, Brett Ratner’s Your Pick To Direct A Movie About The History Of MTV? It’s A Choice … If you had to pick someone to direct a movie depicting the messy, GTL-esque history of MTV, who would you go with? If you chose Brett Ratner, you win! The “Tower Heist” director is in talks to adapt “I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution” for the big screen. The book, written by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum, focuses on the network in the early ’80s and ’90s. For those more familiar with MTV’s current slate of reality programming, you be unaware that the network’s original focus was, ya’ know, music. This is the second television network to get the movie-making treatment in recent months. The ESPN book “Those Guys Have All The Fun” was optioned for a feature film by “Social Network” producer Michael De Luca. http://news.moviefone.com/2012/03/16/mtv-movie-brett-ratner-director_n_1353784.html Fans Of “Easy A” Can Rest Easy, Will Gluck’s Getting Behind The Camera Again Pushy parents have long been fodder for all sorts of projects, including those awful shows about stage mothers who foist various makeup, clothing and entertainment training on their tiny tots. But what about when a prodigy decides he’s had enough of the pressure and goes his own way? That’s part of the story in Sony’s developing drama “How To Disappear Completely,” which has “Easy A/Friends With Benefits” director Will Gluck attached to direct. It sounds like a freshly pitched concept, but the movie will actually be a stealthy remake of 2006 Swedish comedy “Vitus.” Original “Men In Black” writer Ed Solomon wrote the first draft of the English version. http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=33431 Freshly Clean, Gerard Butler’s Getting Back To Bidness Spec action script “Olympus Has Fallen” is generating plenty of heat at the moment. A few days ago, Millennium Films grabbed up the rights to Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt’s work, launching the hunt for a potential star. Call off the hounds! Gerard Butler is now signed on to take the lead. He’ll play a down-on-his-luck former Service Agent who — naturally — is the president and America’s only hope when the White House is invaded and taken over by terrorists. The next step will be to find a director who can stage the fight scenes and is free to shoot the thing in September. http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=33435 Here’s A Stunner For You: Hill And Bacall Are Back To It, Doing A “Jump Street” Sequel With action comedy “21 Jump Street” launching this weekend to lashings of critical praise and a healthy first place at box offices in America, it’s really not that surprising that Sony would want to strike while the iron is sizzling and lock in a deal with story writer/co-star Jonah Hill and screenplay man Michael Bacall to craft a sequel. While they’ve been thinking up ideas for a while now, it’s not known whether Hill will stick to bashing out the treatment with Bacall then letting him take script duties this time, but given how well that arrangement worked out for the first movie, it seems only natural that they’d work it that way again. http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=33436 It Looks Like Rayna Campbell IS “Layla Fourie” Currently shooting on location in Johannesburg, South Africa is Pia Marais’ “Layla Fourie” — a thriller that centers on a young single mother whose life becomes entangled in lies, fear and suspicion after taking a job administering polygraph tests, and she soon becomes a suspect herself. Produced by Germany’s Pandora Film Produktion, South Africa’s DV8 Films/Zinebar, IDTV (Netherlands), Cinema Defacto (France) and WDR/ARTE, the English-language the movie stars black British actress Rayna Campbell as the title character, and August Diehl (who most will remember from Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds” playing SS-Sturmbannführer Dieter Hellstrom). http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/shooting-underway-for-south-african-thriller-layla-fourie-starring-brit-rayna-campbell Ethan Hawke Liked Working With Director Pawel Pawlikowski So Much, He’s Doing It Again After combining talents for “The Woman On the Fifth,” Ethan Hawke and Paris-based Polish helmer Pawel Pawlikowski are set to reunite once more for a gentle black comedy about the making of a film with Sir Ben Kingsley, Christopher Lambert and Russian thesp Chulpan Khamatova also on board. Titled “Epic,” but not to be confused with the helmer’s ’92 war documentary “Serbian Epics,” the film follows the story of a washed-up British director who gets invited to make a national epic in an obscure (and fictitious) Caucasus Republic with Kingsley to play the nation’s dictator, Lambert as the film’s crazed star and Khamatova as the “beauty and brains” presumably in the movie-in-a-movie. http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/ethan-hawke-pawel-pawlikowski-reteam-for-epic-ben-kingsley-christopher-lambert-chulpan-khamatova-also-join Those Pang Brothers Are Unleashing An “Inferno” On Us All Universe Films will back the $18 million 3D disaster film “Inferno” by Hong Kong genre specialists Oxide and Danny Pang. The Pangs were the first filmmakers in Hong Kong to venture into the 3D arena with “The Child’s Eye 3D” in 2010 and followed by “Sleepwalker” the next year. The Pang twins will direct an ensemble cast led by LauChing-wan and Louis Koo, who will reunite after starring in 2009’s “Overheard” and its 2011 sequel, with the former playing a firefighter. Frequent Pang star Angelica Lee will also join the cast. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/filmmart-2012-pang-brothers-unleash-301468 Jason Priestley Is Ready To Give Someone Else A Close Up Former “Beverly Hills, 90210″ star Jason Priestley is to direct the indie drama “Cas & Dylan” this summer, with Tatiana Maslany (“The Vow”) attached as a lead. The gig has the Vancouver native moving into directing narrative features after he helmed episodes of a host of TV shows including “Call Me Fitz,” “Haven” and “90210″ and a 1999 theatrical documentary about the Canadian rock band Barenaked Ladies. In “Cas & Dylan,” from indie producer Montefiore Films, Priestley tackles a dark road-trip comedy about a 61-year-old dying man who plans to end his life on his own terms. That quest takes a detour when the man ends up on the lam with an eccentric 22-year-old woman. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jason-priestley-directorial-debut-cas-dylan-301251 New Blumhouse Horror Flick Finds Itself A Cast Todd Stashwick, Audrey Marie Anderson, and Alexa Lydon has been set to star in “Mockingbird,” the Blumhouse thriller being made by Universal. The project falls under the micro-budget film label run by Jason Blum; the production banner has a first look deal with Universal. Blum is producing with Adrienne Biddle, Marc Platt, Adam Siegel and Bryan Bertino. Bertino is directing the movie, which will begin shooting April in Los Angeles. The project, formerly known as “Red Balloons,” tells the story a couple who are given a camera and a set of instructions. They must carry out what’s on the document or someone will die. Stashwick will play the husband, Anderson his wife. Lydon’s part is unknown. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/todd-stashwick-mockingbird-jason-blum-301219 And The Latest Warren Ellis-Created Comic Book Makes Its Way To The Big Screen His Ryan Reynolds-starring Deadpool frustratingly remains in development limbo, but Tim Miller has found another off-kilter comics property to claim his attention, in the form of “Red” creator Warren Ellis’ “Gravel.” “Gravel” began life as a sporadically released limited comic series, co-created by Ellis and Mike Wolfer, before becoming a regular monthly title with Wolfer at the reins on his own. It involves “combat magician” William Gravel, a British SAS soldier who specialises in magic as it applies to war and occasionally moonlights as a mercenary on “X-Files” style gigs that require supernatural solutions. http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=33428 Lionsgate Knows, If There’s One Thing The World Needs, It’s More Leprechauns If you’re a horror head, you may well have a soft spot for Freddy, Jason, Michael, Pinhead and, if you’re dedicated, Chucky and the Corn children. But true connoisseurs of inexplicably long and increasingly mind-boggling franchises will prick up their ears this morning at the news that Lionsgate is planning to reboot the Leprechaun series. The proximity of this announcement to St Patrick’s Day is probably not a coincidence. The original “Leprechaun” came out in 1993, starring Warwick Davis as the titular murderous imp, and providing a pre-Friends starring role for Jennifer Aniston. It was released by Trimark, which Lionsgate swallowed in 2000. It spawned an amazing five sequels in “Leprechauns 2″ and “3,” “Leprechaun 4: In Space,” “Leprechaun In The Hood,” and “Leprechaun: Back 2 Tha Hood.” http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=33427 Yes, Virginia. Thanks To ABC Family, There WILL Be A “Home Alone 5″! Macaulay Culkin may be past his “Home Alone” days, but the franchise lives on. ABC Family has just announced that “Home Alone 5: Alone In The Dark” is in the works. The fourth installment of “Home Alone,” “Home Alone 4: Taking Back the House,” was also made for television, premiering on ABC in November 2002, while the first three films — two of which starred Culkin — had theatrical debuts. The “Home Alone 5″ will star Christian Martyn as Finn, an 8-year-old boy who moves from California to a creepy house in Maine, which he is convinced is haunted by a ghost. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/16/home-alone-5-alone-in-the-dark_n_1353974.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+weblogsinc%2Ftvsquad+%28TV+Squad%29 Well, This Certainly Can’t Be A Surprise: “Despicable Me” Team On To “Cat In The Hat” There was a dark time, back around 2003, when Hollywood thought that it could replicate the success of Ron Howard’s “How The Grinch Stole Christmas” by stuffing Mike Myers into a fur suit and letting him run rampant as fellow Dr Seuss character “The Cat In The Hat.” The results? Not pretty. Well, it would seem that the “Cat” might just be getting a second chance at the cinema, with “Despicable Me” producers Illumination Entertainment and Universal plotting a CG ‘toon version of the tale. The two companies just scored a healthy opening for their latest Seussian offering, “The Lorax.” Add to that the fact that Illumination overlord Chris Melendandri is a huge Seuss fan, a friend of the man’s widow, Audrey, and has seen success with “Lorax” and, back in his Fox days, “Horton Hears A Who!,” and it all looks positively predictable. http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=33424 IFC’s Green Light Means The Ongoing Redemption Of Marc Maron Continues Last June, Marc Maron announced that he shot a pilot for a TV semi-adaptation of his podcast “WTF.” Now, IFC plans to officially announce soon that the cable channel has picked up a full ten-episode season of the show. Maron’s show (currently untitled, but possibly also called “WTF”) will join another podcast-turned-TV show on IFC’s lineup, “Comedy Bang! Bang!”, an off-kilter talk show with Scott Aukerman and Reggie Watts. In the pilot for Maron’s show, which IFC did not ask to be reshot, Maron plays himself — a grizzled comedian who hosts a podcast called “WTF,” where he interviews his comedy colleagues from his garage (the pilot was even shot in his actual house). Although Laughspin reports that no casting has been confirmed, Ed Asner played Maron’s father and Ken Jeong played himself as a podcast guest in the pilot episode. The episode was directed by Academy Award winner Luke Matheny and co-written by Duncan Birmingham. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/17/wtf-with-marc-maron-coming-to-ifc_n_1355493.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+weblogsinc%2Ftvsquad+%28TV+Squad%29 Project Updates
Lily Collins Need Lose No Sleep, As Her “Mortal Instruments” Has A New Helmer After Sony decided to ditch the first cinematic take on Cassandra Clare’s fantasy book series “The Mortal Instruments,” production company Constantin Film promised to try to set it up elsewhere, and now has Unique Films on board to co-finance, with “Karate Kid” remake helmer Harald Zwart directing. Lily Collins, who has been attached for a while now, is staying on board to play the heroine, Clary Fray, a young woman who discovers that she’s a descendant of a line of Shadowhunters, a secret group of half-angel warriors who protect the world from demons. In the first book, “City Of Bones” (which will form the backbone of the first film), Fray’s mother disappears and the girl joins forces with other Shadowhunters who show her the alternate New York called Downworld that is just brimming with nasty supernatural creatures. http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=33434 Another Black List Script Moves Forward, Snags A Director Here’s an intriguing and potentially very satisfying union of director and script … J Blakeson, who made a splash with 2009’s “The Disappearance Of Alice Creed,” is now in negotiations to tackle much buzzed-about Black List script “The Imitation Game” for Warner Bros. Graham Moore wrote the screenplay, which explores the complicated and fascinating life of Alan Turing, the mathematician and logician who helped to crack the Enigma code, a vital turning point in World War II. After the conflict, he became a leading light in the development of computer storage and early artificial intelligence. http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=33432 Pilot Season
Ryan Murphy’s “New Normal” Keeps Adding Faces Ryan Murphy’s NBC comedy pilot “The New Normal” has picked up a new bad boy. Jayson Blair (MTV’s “The Hard Times of RJ Berger”) has been cast as a guest star on the pilot, which would become a major recurring role if NBC picks it up to series. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/17/the-new-normal-ryan-murphy-jayson-blair_n_1355458.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+weblogsinc%2Ftvsquad+%28TV+Squad%29 It Wouldn’t Be Monday Without A Mass Casting Update It looks like Yunjin Kim is taking Jack Shephard’s advice. The former “Lost” star is set to return to ABC in the summer of 2013 for the new series “Mistresses.” Based on the BBC One series of the same name, “Mistresses” focuses on four women and their scandalous love lives. Kim is set to play a psychiatrist who was in the middle of an affair with one of her patients before he died. “Gossip Girl” writer KJ Steinberg will adapt the series, while “Revenge’s” Bob Sertner will handle executive producer duties. “Brothers and Sisters” star Matthew Rhys will play a KGB spy in the FX series “The Americans,” opposite Keri Russell. Noah Emmerich (“Super 8″) is also in talks for a role. Former “SNL” Weekend Update host and current radio broadcaster Dennis Miller has joined the cast of “Awesometown.” The ABC pilot stars Ben Rappaport (“Outsourced”) and has a “Friends”-y bent: it’s about four friends living and working in New York. Miller will play Rappaport’s boss. And, finally, Kat Foster (“Weeds”) has been cast as Zachary Levi’s onscreen wife in the new Fox comedy pilot “Let It Go.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/17/mistresses-yunjin-kim_n_1355681.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+weblogsinc%2Ftvsquad+%28TV+Squad%29 Acquisitions/Film Festivals
That’s Right, Films Sell At The Miami Film Festival, Too! Outsider Pictures has acquired Pablo Giorgelli’s “Las Acacias” from French-based international film sales and distribution company Urban Distribution International, for US theatrical distribution. The deal was announced via the Industry Office of the 29th annual Miami International Film Festival. Already a winner of major prizes at last year’s Cannes Film Festival (Camera d’Or for Best First Film) and the Latin Horizons prize at the San Sebastian Film Festival, Giorgelli’s film unfolds along the highway linking Asunción to Buenos Aires, which trucker Rubén is accustomed to traveling solo. This time, however, he’s got a passenger, Jacinta, and a road full of revelations on the horizon. Giorgelli’s film was co-produced by Buenos Aires-based companies AIRECINE and Utópica Cine, along with Armonika Entertainment from Spain. http://www.miamifilmfestival.com/ Rome Fest Sets Its Eyes On A New Artistic Director After numerous delays in voting to make it official, Marco Müller has been appointed as artistic director of the International Rome Film Festival. It’s a significant move toward raising the profile of the festival. This comes after Müller was not asked back to his role in the same position at the Venice Film Festival — which clearly overshadows Rome as Italy’s most renowned film festival — earlier this year, which followed 8 years in that position. Previous to that, he had worked for both Rotterdam and Locarno. http://www.indiewire.com/article/rome-fest-officially-hires-ex-venice-artistic-director-marco-muller Cinema Conservancy Takes A Ride On “The Color Wheel” Alex Ross Perry’s sophomore feature “The Color Wheel,” which topped Indiewire’s 2011 end-of-year poll for best undistributed film, has received distribution from Cinema Conservancy, a new company from Tyler Brodie and Hunter Gray, who will take the film to Brooklyn for its opening week, and follow that run with 15-city run. Co-staring and co-written by Perry and Carlen Altman (“You Wont Miss Me”), “The Color Wheel” is an odd, funny story of a slacker brother and ambitious sister on a mission to move her things from her ex-lover/ex-professor’s home. http://www.indiewire.com/article/alex-ross-perrys-the-color-wheel-iws-best-undistributed-film-of-2011-finds-distribution Thanks To Image Entertainment, Jessica Biel Will Be Back In Multiplexes Soon Image Entertainment has acquired all U.S. rights to the Jessica Biel-starring thriller “The Tall Man” as part of a deal with Canadian co-producer Mind’s Eye Entertainment unveiled this week at SXSW. The film, which was shot in northern British Columbia, is a France-Canada co-production produced by Minds Eye Entertainment, Radar Films, Forecast Pictures and Highwire Pictures. The ensemble cast includes Jodelle Ferland, Stephen McHattie, William B. Davis, Samantha Ferris and Katherine Ramdeen. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jessica-biel-starrer-tall-man-301181 Business/Legal News
Clearly, This Will Never End: “Jurassic Park” The Latest To Get A 3D Refinish “The only movie that I would ever even consider retrofitting is the first ‘Jurassic Park,’” Steven Spielberg said last year. “I think would look pretty spectacular in 3D.” Looks like the acclaimed director is ready to put his money where his mouth is: Universal has set a 3D re-release of “Jurassic Park” for July 19, 2013. Originally released on June 11, 1993, “Jurassic Park” earned over $357 million at U.S. theaters and another $557 million abroad. With the re-release, “Park” could become Spielberg’s first $1 billion global hit; the dinosaur adventure currently stands at $914.6 million worldwide. Based on the novel by Michael Crichton, “Jurassic Park” imagines what dinosaurs would look like in present day. Despite being 19 years old, the special effects work in the film still has an impact on movies today. http://news.moviefone.com/2012/03/16/jurassic-park-3d-release-date_n_1352880.html Nothing Grim About This News: Peacock Renews “Grimm” The future for “Grimm” is bright: NBC has ordered a second season of the fairy tale procedural. NBC confirmed it handed out an early Season 2 order to the freshman Friday night drama. TVLine was the first to report the news. “Grimm” premiered to 6.7 million viewers, one of the strongest premieres of NBC’s 2011-2012 season. It’s also one of three new NBC dramas left on the Peacock’s schedule: “Grimm” and NBC’s midseason outings “Awake” and “Smash” are the only new dramatic additions still standing. NBC’s other new dramas — “Prime Suspect,” “The Playboy Club” and “The Firm” — have been removed from the schedule. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/16/grimm-renewed-season-2_n_1354052.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+weblogsinc%2Ftvsquad+%28TV+Squad%29 HBO Wants To Help Docs Qualify For The Oscars The rule changes for documentaries to qualify for next year’s Academy Awards require a multi-city theatrical run and a review in The NY Times. HBO Documentary Films czar Sheila Nevins has said that, going forward, HBO will now choose a far smaller number of films to qualify for the Oscars. (The rest will head for Emmy contention.) Well, now HBO has picked one. They will partner with Submarine Entertainment and Music Box Films to open Matthew Akers’ “Marina Abramovic The Artist is Present” theatrically to qualify the movie for Oscar consideration, shortly before its June premiere on HBO. Music Box is partnering with Josh Braun’s Submarine Entertainment for the film’s domestic distribution. The film is a Show of Force Production in association with HBO Documentary Films. http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/music-box-acquires-sundance-hbo-doc-marina-abramovic-the-artist-is-present And, It Appears That’ll Be All For Rosie’s Show On OWN Forget all those reports that Rosie O’Donnell’s talk show on OWN was relocating from Oprah’s Harpo Studios in Chicago to New York. Rosie’s show was offically cancelled by OWN Friday. Tha fact of the matter was that nobody was watching the show, averaging about 200,000 viewers per episode. Compare that to OWN’s very popular reality show “Welcome to Sweetie’s Pie” which begins its new season on March 31. According to one media souce, that show was pulled in over 6.1 million veiwers since that series began. http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/oprah-dumps-rosie Well, Well, Well! “TYATR” Is Getting Some New Blood! CBS’ “The Young and the Restless” is adding a former 90210 villain to its ranks. Blake Hood has joined the long-running soap opera as a series regular. Hood will play Kyle Jenkins Abbott, the son of Jack Abbott (Peter Bergman) and the late Diane Jenkins (Maura West) and will make his debut on the No. 1 daytime drama on April 27. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/young-and-the-restless-blake-hood-301276 Industry Moves
Miramax Needs A New CEO, So We Recommend Trying Craig’s List Miramax CEO Mike Lang is stepping down from his post a little more than a year after taking it on, the film company said Friday. He has agreed to remain a consultant to the company as it searches for a successor. Miramax CFO Steve Schoch will run the company until a permanent successor can be found, the company said. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/risky-business/miramax-ceo-mike-lang-resigns-301120 Around The Web
An Interesting Take On How Sterling Hayden's Death In "The Godfather" Is An Analogy About Hollywood — Indiewire
An Interesting Take On How "The Nutty Professor" Is A Microcosm Of Eddie Murphy's Career — Moviefone
Who Knew Celebrities So Enjoyed Making Music Video Cameos? — EmpireOnline
Can You Guess Who Is Hollywood's Most In Demand Actor? — Movieline
Website to Watch
http://desktop.onlive.com/ This service is available for Android tablets. It was previously only available for iPad users, and brings a copy of the Windows 7 desktop interface to a user’s tablet through the cloud. It offers several apps accessible within the tablet app, including Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. A free version brings with it 2GB of storage and access to all of the apps. A premium version for $4.99 per month also offers access to other cloud-based storage services, as well as a fast web browser. Versions for the PC, Mac and TV are coming soon. Not bad for when you find yourself on a train, having to edit a document, graph or presentation. Additional Source:
www.cynopsis.com
FNB Editorial
The Fix, As They Say, Was Most Definitely In Hey, did you happen to hear about what a spectacular failure Disney’s “John Carter” has turned out to be? Of course you have, because the film has been called that for the last six months. But did you know that the movie only came out 10 days ago? And have you bothered to see it? Because we have, and we can’t help thinking that something very strange, and not a little bit sinister, is going on here. We’re not sure how this happened, or why, but the way the media powers that be decided to attack the Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation so long before it even saw the light of day has been calculated. Questions were raised back in the fall, criticisms were lobbed about the story, the movie’s budget (rumored to be about $250 million, but you probably already knew that) called into question, long before anyone actually saw the thing. It was called a failure before a single frame was shown to the public. Well, you know what happens when you repeatedly tell the movie going public how awful a movie is for a long time before it comes out? If you keep ramming this fact down its collective throat? Do you know what happens then? The audience doesn’t come. If it’s convinced this will be a waste of its time, people will stay away in droves. But the thing is, the movie is a LOT of fun. It’s an enormous spectacle of space opera and was a blast to watch. And it’s not like we were alone here, as it did make over $30 million its opening weekend. And yet, based on its budget (and how DARE Disney spend that kind of money on a non-sequel?), that is seen as a flop. Did you also know that it had a huge opening overseas? That, while it’ll probably top out at about $75 million domestically, it will come close to $300 million internationally? And even with a cumulative gross like that, it will STILL be considered a bomb? A strange sort of cautionary tale meant to scare other studios from similar folly? Maybe it’s an anti-Disney thing (and, by the way, the Mouse House ain’t blame free here, with a crummy marketing campaign and an ill-advised decision to change the title from the more evocative “John Carter of Mars” to the far more nondescript and bland “John Carter,” which might as well be about an ER doctor), or maybe the media powers that be just had a meeting and decided to be appalled at the enormous amount of money spent, or … jeez, we don’t even know. We’re just trying to figure out why a studio taking a chance on something like this would be met with such scorn. Not that Disney needs to be defended by us, but it’s moments like this when we stop and wonder aloud if we know anything about this business at all. Editor@filmnewsbriefs.com | 
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