Disney’s John Carter was a huge box office failure, but adapting the original novel Princess of Mars had a long and torturous history. While Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars book series was massively popular for the last century, no one would attempt to adapt it into a movie because it would be so expensive to go live-action. It’s a little known fact that we might have had the first John Carter movie in 1936. Famed Warner Brothers director Bob Clampett attempted it with animation. He used innovative techniques like oil painting to create dynamic test footage. Unfortunately, the project folded when the studio decided they wanted a Tarzan project instead. Yet thanks to the Internet, we have some of the footage available, along with Clampett himself narrating it.
What did you think of the footage? Could John Carter have been a success in 1936?
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<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="38425 ">3 Comments
That probably would have worked a lot better in 1936, before Star Wars, Star Trek, Superman, and so forth. It would have seemed original then instead of like a knockoff.
The special effects would've been limited, but no one would've noticed back then. I still thought last year's movie rocked though. Don't know why it didn't find an audience.
282 million dollars is a failure wow alright lol I wish I made that failure lmfao