Sci-Fi Storm

Here are some of the big and our favorite stories we covered in 2012…

In January, rapidly rising British actor Benedict Cumberbatch joined Star Trek: Into Darkness, while CW’s Arrow dropped “Green” from the name and named Stephen Amell the lead actor.

We lost actor Ian Abercrombie and the voice of the Robot from Lost In Space Dick Tufeld.
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Polly Walker (Clarice on Caprica, John Carter) will guest star on Syfy’s hit series Warehouse 13 as Charlotte Dupres, a nemesis of the Warehouse Team who compounds mystery with intrigue and whose innumerable layers and secrets will unfold over the course of Season 4.5. Walker’s story arc will encompass five episodes.

Warehouse 13 returns in April 2013 with 10 all-new episodes.

Warehouse 13 follows a team of government agents who work at a massive, top-secret storage facility in windswept South Dakota, which houses every strange artifact, mysterious relic, fantastical object and preternatural souvenir ever collected by the U.S. government. The Warehouse’s caretaker Artie Nielsen (Saul Rubinek) charges Pete Lattimer (Eddie McClintock), Myka Bering (Joanne Kelly), Claudia Donovan (Allison Scagliotti) and Steve Jinks (Aaron Ashmore) with chasing down reports of supernatural and paranormal activity in search of new objects to cache at the Warehouse, as well as helping him control the Warehouse itself.

Warehouse 13 is produced for Syfy by Universal Cable Productions. Jack Kenny (The Book of Daniel) is executive producer and showrunner.

Mark Andrews, who is currently taking about the upcoming Disney/Pixar movie Brave, spoke with The Playlist about Brave and other things, including the epic Disney box-office flop he produced, John Carter. And he’s quite defensive about the movie.

“It was a crazy experience. I had kind of gone through it with ‘Iron Giant.’ You have a great film and nobody saw it,” Andrews said. “And here it happens again on ‘Carter.’ And it’s like ‘Are you kidding me? This happens twice in a lifetime?'”

He felt that Disney was writing off the movie before it had a chance, and didn’t really give it any support. Yet it has had decent [asin=B005LAIH2W]DVD[/asin]/[asin=B005LAIH3G]Blu-ray[/asin] sales and is reportedly one of the most pirated movies. And I personally liked it. And Andrews isn’t ready to write it off yet. “We’re ready to go. As soon as somebody from Disney says, ‘We want ‘John Carter 2,” we’d be right there.”

The movie may better be known for it’s disastrous box office precipitated by poor marketing and possibly costing Rich Ross his job, but I don’t think John Carter is a bad movie…I think it was a strong movie that kept true to the story, with some added twists. You can see my review of it here.

It still has a small chance at redemption though – tomorrow it is released on [sfs=1234]Blu-ray[/sfs] and [sfs=1235]DVD[/sfs]. It may not matter in the long run, but hopefully it will grow on people.

Could John Carter be causing other studios to turn a more critical eye on their big budget actioners? It seems that way, with Paramount pushing back the release of G.I. Joe: Retaliation by 9 months. The studio’s original claim was to make a 3D version, but not many bought that as the sole excuse. And now it seems that there is a lot more behind the delay.

Despite having started the marketing ball rolling months ago, and getting all the merchandise in place for the original June 29th release date, it appears that poor testing results on the film has them looking at it again, to the point they may want to completely rework the story.

One item appears to be the plan to kill off Duke Hauser at the beginning of the film. Hauser is played by Channing Tatum, who is suddenly seen as a big box office draw. Killing him off early would mean seriously limiting his draw for the film. Of course, delays and re-shoots are going to cost more – more money for Paramount to potentially lose if it doesn’t solve the problem – and as John Carter showed – let the public know they’ve solved the problem.

I’m hearing from various directions this evening that the loss for Disney’s John Carter is worse than analysts predicted, with Disney taking a $200 million write-off and Disney Studios expected to have a loss of $120 million in the quarter. Analysts were predicting $50-100 million less.

Now that The Hunger Games gets released this week, no one expects any appreciable income for John Cater in the coming weeks, and it appears they are not expecting a strong DVD market for the movie either.

I finally got the time today to check out John Carter, and see if it was deserving of the critics who lambasted it – or the so-called “fanboys” who praised it. My verdict: good movie, not superb, but it had the potential to be a great epic. I do have to say that I’m not sure where it actually missed. It was just something of an overall feeling.
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If you remember, Disney made a big announcement in September that it was going to build an Avatar-themed land at the Animal Kingdom park in Walt Disney World in Florida. But since then there has been little said, and no visible work has been done.

If you follow Disney fan boards, there has been a large uptick in speculation that Disney put the plan on hold or even outright canceled it, and given how long it might be before we see the next movie, the costs, etc. it seemed that could have been the case.

Well, at today’s shareholder meeting for the corporation, Disney President/CEO Bob Iger and Walt Disney Parks and Resorts chairman Tom Staggs talked about some upcoming things, and Avatar was specifically mentioned. They are still working on the plans, and the “land” themed for Pandora will likely not open until 2015, which could put it around the time of the sequels.

During a Q&A period, Iger was asked about how John Carter would affect the financials of the corporation, but Iger said it was too early to tell.

The key word is “survive” – after the weekend where all eyes were on Disney and the predicted major flop of John Carter, the $250 million budget movie opened to a $30.6 million domestic weekend (and word was is that Disney brass hoped to see that 3), but perhaps amazingly it took in $70.6 million in overseas markets. But still, the performance is still poor, and some analysts believe it needs needs about $600 million globally to break even.

Reviews are fairly polarized – it’s still 50% on Rotten Tomatoes, but with 72% of the audience liking it. And among the fan community, I’m hearing from various places that some believe some negative reviewers may not have even watched the movie.

I’m going to try and check the movie out myself later this week, with a hopefully open mind.

Despite the fact that some members of the media seem to want to see John Carter crash and burn terribly, and the early returns aren’t great (it is looking at a ~$10 million Friday and $30+ million weekend, for a solid #2 behind The Lorax), I’ve been hearing a lot of good comments. Here is a review from Inside the Magic on why it’s worth seeing. And it appears that the movie struck big in Russia, where it took in $6.5 million – and is the country’s biggest ever opening day. Rating are mixed on Rotten Tomatoes where it is currently 51%.

Did Disney’s lack of understanding how to market the film doom it, or has the last-minute effort had some effect to save it?

I’m not sure when I’ll get the chance to see it, but I’ll let you know when I do.