Domestic Total as of Mar. 25: $62,347,000 ($250 Million Box Office for John Carter by Monday)

http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=johncarterofmars.htm ^ | boxofficemojo

[af_vet_rr]

Just the worst title in the history of movies is all, and poor marketing overall.

If by poor marketing, you mean basing it on a book series that very few people under the age of 30 have read or even heard of, then I agree completely.

[Hoosier-Daddy]

Bad title, book written a very long time ago. I read the series I was a kid. Thought they were great and so were the illustrations.

[PAR]

I read all the Edgar Rice Borroughs Martian books when I was a kid so I saw this movie the day it came out. Great movie - they’re never as good as the book but this one is very well done.

If you don’t go see it at the theatre, aren’t you giving up the option to purchase a $10 tub of popcorn? I always get a funny look from the concession stand attendent when I blurt out “And that will only be $85.00” before they tell me what the actual total is. Highway robbery.

[GunRunner]

I only go to the Alamo Drafthouse. It's a dinner theater with first run movies and full service bar and restaurant that you order from before and during the movie. Wide rows if you need to go to the can, and special screenings of classics, like for instance they'll have The Godfather night where they show the film and serve spaghetti and meatballs and red wine, and little toy pop guns for everyone to shoot off when Santino gets killed, stuff like that.

I can't imagine sitting in a normal theater again. I'd rather watch a new release on Blu-Ray at home with a few Guinnesses with the option to pause. But I will pay to go to the Drafthouse.

[vbmoneyspender]

I took my 2 kids (ages 6 and 8) to see it on a Sunday afternoon - including a bag of popcorn and 2 cokes, the total was $55.

[GenXteacher]

I think that one is mostly a case of a film that was overbudget and badly marketed. I saw it last Thursday and it was pretty good.

[netmilsmom]

Theaters would go out of business.

My nephew manages one in Cleveland. Disney wanted to sell DVDs of the first run movies in the lobby, if you could show a ticket stub.

The theater chains got together and refused to show another Disney, Touchstone, etc, if they tried it. Disney makes tons from home sales but also makes googobs releasing their movies back to theaters. They actually backed down.

[netmilsmom]

>>not just the usual slack-jawed movie audience<<

I know you didn’t mean that to sound as elitist as it did.

[yldstrk]

That is so wrong. AMC has lost its fricking marbles

[mrsmith]

Not elitist, just factual.

One doesn’t have to be slack-jawed to enjoy “John Carter”- It’s a good movie for roday’s Hollywood.

But one does have to be slack-jawed if one saw it because of the marketing.

(May be a little ‘ageism’- movies are marketed to kids.)

[Sans-Culotte]

I spent too much on my home theater to watch some shitty cam-corded POS. But that’s just me.

[LS]

Yeah, I really want to see it-—just not in a theater. Saw “Immortals” the other day. Blaaaah

[netmilsmom]

I’m just telling you how it sounds to someone with a PhD, who is also a movie goer.

I watch movies because of the marketing. We watch trailers and chose what we will spend our hard earned money on. With this economy, while we might be interested in seeing a movie on home video, it’s only the movies that are sold well that get our 14.00 per ticket. Other people do the same.

But just because people are not interested in a character from 1912, does not make them slack-jawed. It’s hurting in the cash department. If this movie had come out in 2005, it may have been a huge hit.

At “Hunger Games” (one my kids wouldn’t miss) on Thursday, we saw trailers from “Dark Shadows” and “The Avengers”. Both are on the “see” list. The others, I couldn’t even tell you what they were about.

[netmilsmom]

A lady behind me at Hunger Games was complaining that she ordered chicken strips that were 18.00.

[vbmoneyspender]

I think that one is mostly a case of a film that was overbudget and badly marketed. I saw it last Thursday and it was pretty good.

The problem I have with the badly marketed theory is that the movie has done huge business overseas. So for the theory to be correct it would have to mean that American marketing people didn't know how to market the movie in America, but knew exactly how to market it in Russia, Germany, France, Britain, Brazil, Mexico, etc.

The more likely explanation (which the studios have acknowledged is the case) is that young males don't go to the movies like they used to. The question is, what are they doing instead? I believe the answer to that question is that (among other things) they are watching newly released movies on the internet instead of watching them at the theatre.