“Mars Needs Moms”: Anatomy of a flop
Any movie that gets produced represents a lot of collective wisdom of the filmmaking business so when one flops, especially a big budget, high profile movie, it sends a shiver down Hollywood’s collective spine. If that studio was so wrong, could we be next?
That’s precisely what is going on right now with the fate of the new animated movie Mars Needs Moms which in about a week after being released has grossed $13.7M worldwide. With a reported budget of $150M, this represents a flop of epic proportions. And as a recent NYT article demonstrates, now comes all the second guessing and repercussions:
“Scary” is how Chuck Viane, president of distribution for Walt Disney Studios, described the audience rejection of the film. “Was it the idea? The execution? The timing? There are a lot of excuses being floated.”
The financial impact on Disney’s studio will be severe. The company has already taken a write-down of about $100 million related to the film and the closing of ImageMovers Digital, a motion-capture animation division run by Robert Zemeckis, who helped produce “Mars Needs Moms.”
Tens of millions more in losses are expected, pending worldwide box-office results. The film opened in 14 overseas territories, representing 25 percent of the international market, and attracted $2.1 million.
Mr. Zemeckis, whose directing credits include seminal hits like “Back to the Future” and “Forrest Gump,” was unavailable to comment on Monday, a spokeswoman said.
While it’s easy to get all snarky whenever a movie flops, those who work in Hollywood never enjoy moments like these. When Disney shuts down a division, those are real people who lose real jobs. Moreover a studio’s natural reaction to a flop is retrenchment which generally means playing it safer which translates into less interesting movies. Mars Needs Moms is especially cringeworthy to me because the movie is based on a book by one of my favorite writers Berkeley Breathed who I’ve featured here and here. And there’s this:
Disney decided to pull the plug on the movie after Zemeckis’s latest animated film “Mars Needs Mums” bombed at the box office over the weekend.
Actions have consequences. So do flops.
For more of the NYT article, go here.
UPDATE: Some helpful comments and you should check them all out. Here are two especially worth noting. Jason provides this link to a Vanity Fair article on the 11 biggest movie flops of all time. Is there something screenwriters can learn from that list?
And en provides this list of the top 9 animated movies of all time:
Shrek 2–441M$
Toy story 3–415M$
Finding Nemo — 339M$
The Lion King — 328M$
Shrek 3–322M$
Up — 293M$
Shrek- 267M$
The Incredibles — 261M$
Monsters Inc — 255M$
Then makes these points:
A few things: first of all, only 2 out of 9 movies on this list have human protagonists which I do not think is a coincidence. It is EXTREMELY difficult to make a blockbuster animated movie with human protagonists. I think it has something to do with the emotional connection of the audience and the suspense of disbelief. Also, The only 2 animated movies on the list with human protagonists were made by Disney AND PIXAR. Mars needs moms was made by Disney alone… So maybe Pixar figured out how to make it work. And maybe the movie should be renamed “Disney needs Pixar”…