S2 [3] THE ANATOMY OF A BOX OFFICE FLOP

What Really Happened?

Andrew Jenks

Society & Culture

4.5 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2018

⏱️ 91 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

John Carter is one of history's biggest box office flops: $250 million... gone. But, it was directed by two-time Academy Award winner Andrew Stanton, had Disney’s marketing prowess, and was based on the book that inspired Star Wars and Avatar. What Really Happened? This episode is the anatomy of a blockbuster gone bust, a possibility even when the person in charge is brilliant. Guests: Andrew Stanton (filmmaker), Michael Sellers (author, filmmaker, former CIA officer), Germain Lussier (film critic), Robert McKee (author, lecturer, story consultant), Matt Singer (film critic), and Brooks Barnes (New York Times Media and Entertainment reporter) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to a new episode of what really happened produced by Dwayne the Rock Johnson Danny Garcia,
0:05.5	Brian Goertz, and cadence 13. Now our show is only as good as our listeners. Y'all fact check me,
0:12.4	provide new insight, give your opinions, and to become a contributor, simply go to jenkspod.com,
0:18.6	slash contributors, or call 413-471-2975. Thank you for being a listener and a voice for the podcast.
0:30.0	Andrew Stanton is really good at winning Oscars. He also really loves his wife. He is legitimately brilliant.
0:45.7	Sometimes we say something or someone is brilliant, but we don't really mean it.
0:50.4	Stanton, however, is. The thing is, he sort of disagrees with me. He claims to think he's more of
0:56.8	like a kid in middle school. What I call for lack of a better term, sixth grade level. I just,
1:03.7	the best way I can explain it is my brain understands things in checker moves, not chest moves,
1:09.1	but I'm attracted to how sophisticated and clever chest moves are.
1:15.7	Andrew Stanton tells stories for a living, and he does it really well. In eighth grade, he came up with
1:22.3	an idea to tell a story about a fish. He jotted it down on paper and passed along to a girl he had
1:28.9	a crush on. Well, 30 years later, when he won an Oscar for Finding Nemo, he got up on stage and said,
1:37.2	to my wife, Julie, I wrote it to you in a note in eighth grade, and now I can say it in front of a
1:41.4	billion people. I love you. When it came time for Andrew Stanton to sort out what he wanted to do next,
1:50.6	he found out that the rights to his favorite childhood book were available. He wanted to make it
1:56.3	into a movie, and Walt Disney Pictures said they'd make it. It's title, John Carter. The film would
2:04.3	be Andrew's first live action movie, as in it wouldn't be animation or CGI. He'd be working with
2:11.1	a massive cast and crew on set or on location. The brilliant Andrew Stanton had a $250 million
2:18.5	budget, the biggest budget at the time in the history of cinema. He got to choose who he wanted to
2:25.1	star in his film. He had Disney's prowess and backing. He was planning two blockbuster sequels.
2:32.0	It was the next Harry Potter or Star Wars. There were talks of a theme park. This was going to be
	...

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