SAG-AFTRA Sued For Witholding Foreign Residuals And … 
Zach Braff Ends $3+M Kickstarter Campaign 
Fox Unscripted TV Czar Mike Darnell To Exit 
FIRST BOX OFFICE: ‘Fast & Furious 6′ Easy … 
NBC Sets Oklahoma Tornado Benefit Concert For May 29 
Cannes: Directors’ Fortnight Honors ‘Les … 
SHOCKER: Tom Cruise Exits ‘Man From … 
A+E Rebuild: BBC’s Jana Bennett To Run Bio And LMN … 
RATINGS RAT RACE: ‘Hannibal’ Hits Low, … 
‘Katie’ Shakeup: Rachel Miskowiec Replaces … 
Hammond On Cannes: French Hero Jerry Lewis On His Return To … 
Cannes: Another Jewelry Heist? $2.6M Necklace Missing After … 
Hammond On Cannes: Leo DiCaprio’s Moon Trip Tops … 
Specialty B.O. Preview: ‘Before Midnight’, … 
2012-2013 Season Network Rankings: CBS Sweeps In Final … 
Full 2012-2013 TV Season Series Rankings 
TOLDJA! Paramount Pocketing $190M From Disney For Marvel … 
‘Good Morning America’ Hits 19-Year Viewership … 
MGM Buys ‘Modern Family’ Producer Ben … 
‘Fashion Police’ Writers Chant On Picket Lines: … 
Universal Makes Seven-Figure Deal For ‘The School For … 
EXCLUSIVE: While Andrew Stanton‘s live-action feature directing debut John Carter led to a precedent-setting $200 million write-down for Disney earlier this summer, the filmmaker is officially out of director jail. I’ve been hearing for months that he would come aboard to direct the sequel to Disney-based Pixar‘s Finding Nemo, with the idea that Disney would give him another shot behind the camera on a live-action film.
I’m told he’s now officially come aboard the Finding Nemo sequel and has a concept the studio loves. Pixar continues to not be helpful on this, as they don’t comment on development. It’s understandable why Disney and Pixar would be excited by this. Stanton won two Oscars for his animation work on Wall-E and Finding Nemo. That original 2003′s fish tale’s $867.9 million worldwide gross makes it still Pixar’s second-highest-grossing film and the third-biggest Disney animated film release ever. And that comes before Finding Nemo is re-released in 3D in September.
As for Disney coming through with another live-action project, I’m hearing that nothing is firm but that the studio is working on it. It looks like the studio is ready to give Stanton a mulligan on John Carter. Stanton, who has played a big role in many of Pixar’s hits going back to Toy Story, has an opportunity to put a big flop behind him and he’s certainly not the first director to have trouble out of the gate, as David Fincher did with Alien 3. Plenty of others failed the first time out and lived to fight another day and Stanton will get the same opportunity from the studio that has made a fortune off his successes.
Loading ...
Main difference between ALIEN 3 and JOHN CARTER is that Fincher never had the control or resources to make the movie he wanted to make. Stanton did. JOHN CARTER was the result.
And the result… was a good movie.
Are you people serious holding Brave up as an example of originality and proof the Pixar isn’t out of Gas? A totally Disney pretty princess movie? Come on…
there’s no way you saw Brave.
Brave was fantastic –totally original, fun, and a great story about a mother/daughter relationship (Disney’s NEVER done that. Pixar aside, they mostly do wicked stepmothers in their animated movies, never a great mother daughter relationship.)
Brave is a princess movie without a prince. That makes it highly original.
I am not a big fan of Pixar cartoons, but I did love John Carter. I would prefer that Andrew worked on his envisioned trilogy of John Carter. Terrible marketing, a nasty media response and negative reviews caused a jump on John Carter mentality when its a wonderful movie. I am so tired of reboots and Comic Book sequels. I know they make money but at some point the “fad” of comic book movies will be over. What will we be left with. Comic book heroes exist because of Edgar Rice Burroughs and his Barsoom books and Tarzan pulp fiction. But if Finding Nemo 2 makes a boat load of money, maybe just maybe I can get what I want and that is Gods of Mars and Warlord of Mars. one can only hope.
Hi Diane.
Yeah, uh: Boo-hoo-hoo.
A lot of us wanted to see BUCKAROO BANZAI AGAINST THE WORLD CRIME LEAGUE.
Sometimes we don’t get the sequels we want. Then we have to just try to be adults about it.
Why can a good movie never stand alone on its own? Why must we create a sequel for anything remotely successful?
Easy money.
Because making movies is a business and this sequel is almost a sure bet. Grow up or don’t see it. Those are your choices.
I have read plenty about the studio crap going on behind John Carter and it all seems to be such a shame as I thought it was a fantastic adventure movie. Given DVD sales figures and the growing legion of John Carter sequel groups and fan efforts in a mere 4 months of it’s theatrical release, and many of the cast and crews’ stated desire to make more, I think John Carter sequels will eventually get made. Don’t forget that for all of the thrashing it got over it’s budget, it made nearly 75% of it’s money from outside the US. Meanwhile, I think Stanton revisiting the Nemo world is a great idea and while beancounters will look at this as a cash grab, the artists behind it won’t and I bet it’ll be good.
john carter was a terrible movie. And the world rejected it. Grow up.
Sorry, Scott, but I totally disagree with you. John Carter was a fantastic epic movie with well developed characters, great CGI incorporated into the real world set. We will just have to disagree respectfully. I am one of those obsessed fans that have seen it more than twenty times. I see something new each time. Anyway, in closing I hope we can agree to disagree.
We will reboot John Carter on Mars many years from now and we will remake it in some new 3-D CGI animation format still to be invented. For those who want to see a sequel go to your local library and read the book series it’s much cheaper for you and us.
John Carter was a good movie, but let’s make it clear that it wasn’t $250M Budget good.
I won’t lie, I am a bit skeptical over the prospect of Finding Nemo 2. While it is Pixar, Finding Nemo doesn’t lend itself to a sequel, nor a prequel. Stanton himself had said he was reluctant to do Finding Nemo 2. The only reason why it’s moving ahead is because Carter bombed and no other project was available for him. The plot would be either Finding Dory, Finding Marlin, or Finding Nemo Again. I don’t have a problem with Pixar making sequels or prequels unlike most of you (I liked every pixar film, even Cars 2) but Finding Nemo is not a film that lends itself to a sequel. Where’s Incredibles 2?
That’s very nice and this movie is probably going to be spectacular, but I still think that Pixar is wasting way too much time on sequels of movies that do not need sequels whatsoever, such as “Cars”. With all of the time they used to make “Cars 2″, are using to make “Monsters Inc. 2″ and will use to make “Finding Nemo 2″, we would have at least two original movies by now, which are the ones we like most, after all. Not to mention that “Finding Nemo 2″‘s plot would seem, at least to me, a bit forced and unnatural. I mean, what are the chances of Nemo being captured AGAIN?
Besides, I believe that the only Pixar movie that actually deserves a sequel is the marvelous “The Incredibles”.
Before you hammer Pixar for originality, realize that most of their work with Disney previous to their brief split had sequels built into their contracts. To my knowledge, this appears to be one of them.
While I don’t see where they could go further with the story of Nemo, I do see a company that will make the most out of what they have been obligated to do.
I don’t care what anyone says, I loved the first “Cars” movie, and I loved “Cars 2″ as well.
Sequels are not necessarily a bad thing.
Besides the whole obvious “making money” aspect, sometimes it can be fun for audiences to see favorite characters involved in a new story.
I agree. I watched the movie on a plane and realized it was actually a great film. It was completely mis-marketed starting with the film’s name. it’s the marketing guys who need a time out.
Just watched it on Blueray 3D and thought it was a damn good film.
Can’t understand the all the negativity around this movie – must be the herd mentality.
No. It was just a terrible kids movie.
It was for kids, with words like “goddamn” and on-camera pissing?
John Carter is one of the finest adventure films since Raiders, and a tragedy Disney marketing totally blew it. There is a fortune to be made on a RE-release with the right marketed “directors cut” and the two sequels. There are millions around the world in full agreement and hoping Disney realizes their opportunity.
What? Brave is not original? So what movie/show/book/other was it based on?
Now that Jobs isn;t there to insist they think, Pixar has stopped.
Stanton just tweeted: “Didn’t you all learn from Chicken Little? Everyone calm down. Don’t believe everything you read. Nothing to see here now.”
So, what’s the real story here? Is he or is he not doing Finding Nemo 2?
Also, John Carter kicked unholy amounts of booty. Zombie America needs to wake the heck up out of their bath-salt-taking, flesh-eating, reality tv show watching stupor and get back to RECOGNIZING REAL GOOD entertainment when it’s dropped in their laps. Think for yourselves people! Just because it didn’t win any popularity contests with the internet elites, doesn’t mean you have to agree with them. Afraid of acknowledging something “unpopular”? Wow – geek culture true is dead.
I’m a little sad to see it written that John Carter was Andrew Stanton’s “first time” “out of the gate”. True, it was his first live-action feature, and Finding Nemo was co-directed by Lee Unkrich, but Stanton was still the director on two feature films before John Carter. Animation is a different medium than live-action, and therefore requires different skills, but to generalize John Carter as his first effort in cinematic storytelling (by comparing it to David Fincher’s Alien 3, which WAS his first narrative feature) is an error.
Very interesting comments!
First, Director Stanton doesn’t need a “mulligan” for John Carter based on the film itself. The film was very entertaining – a fun, sci-fi pulp adventure movie. So the film itself was NOT the problem.
Second, if he needs a “mulligan,” it’s to give Disney a second chance to figure out how to market a sci-fi pulp adventure film like “John Carter.”
So I say, Go! Director Stanton, and make them another billion on a Finding Nemo sequel, and then make “John Carter 2″ for Pixar (or for Disney, if Disney can get its act together form marketing)!
Good luck, and hopefully we’ll see you in pre-production for John Carter 2 (and maybe 3 at the same time) by 2015!
john carter was an unmitigated disaster from beginning to end, as well as one of the biggest critical and financial flops in history. Fanboys like it, but that’s a very small group of people. Thankfully, there will be no further john carter messes.
But I was surprised by this announcement.
I am excited to see that Andrew Stanton is working on a new project and am looking forward to it, though what I really want is to see a John Carter sequel. It was a great film, why Disney did a horrible marketing job I can only guess. Looking forward to seeing more projects by Mr. Stanton! Woot!
I liked John Carter…for everyone else, hey, at least they tried.
i wonder if a non-white director would be given a second chance after a 200 million dollar flop. marketing was bad yes, but we all knew the movie was out there, posters were everywhere. no one knew what Wall-E was about and they still saw that.
I am amused by the many fanboys that are lining-up to defend John Carter (and that they are so offended that most people think that the movie is terrible).
Why do you find it amusing? Many people liked the movie, just like many did not like the movie. But many is a relative term. (I know I just wrote a fragment) Besides what is wrong with wanting a sequel to a movie. They make many of them. I would agree that perhaps too many lovers of the film get easily offended when someone is critical of the movie and say they hated it. I would like to know why they hated it. I mean a well written reason why they hated it. For instance, I did not like “Dark Shadows”, my reasoning is lame, but I never like the character of Barnabas Collins and always felt he was a cad. But, I thought that Johnny Depp did a good job portraying the character even though I did not enjoy this film. But if friends asked me about it, I was honest and told them if they were interested to see it themselves. I also mentioned I did not care for it, but I am biased against vampire movies in general. Anyway short comments are generally of little help in discussing a film or anything.
Oh great, another pixar sequel.
Can’t Pixar think of anything original anymore?
Didn’t they learn anything from Cars 2?
It worked on Toy Story because Toys are universal.
Cars have their own nitch.
How many times do we have to find Nemo again?
What about a much needed Incredibles sequel?
And not one of those prequels.
John Carter is a great film with an even better ending……Thinh Ghost or even Gone with the Wind. It will be a cult classic and deserves at least the trilogy that was planned.It is even better on repeat viewings. Go get the DVD !