JOHN CARTER's no weakling!

Nobody expected Disney's JOHN CARTER to be a big hit, but when tracking results came in a few weeks ago, industry watchers jumped at the numbers, saying that the US$250mil blockbuster could very well be one of the biggest writeoffs in history. Alas, the joy of gloating in their predictions was somewhat knocked out by a better than expected opening for the adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' first 'Barsoom' book, 'A Princess of Mars'. 

Yes, the movie opened domestically to an estimated US$30.6mil, far less of course to make the movie profitable, but not enough for it to be deemed an outright turkey. It was a middling start all right, especially for a movie that cost that much and took up a huge marketing spend, but a possible sign that the movie could build on word of mouth was a larger than expected uptick in Saturday audiences, indicating that its "B+" Cinemascore grade wasn't hurting it at all. 

Better still, the movie opened to the tune of US$70.6mil internationally. Disney said that the movie opened in Russia with the highest opening day in Russian cinema history and the #1 opening weekend of the year. It was also the #1 U.S. film in all of the major opened markets in Asia, Latin America and Europe. There's still China to go, and if previous 3D Hollywood movies are any indication, numbers could be huge. 

It's highly likely that JOHN CARTER will turn out the way PRINCE OF PERSIA did- an unremarkable domestic performance with strong international sales to boost box office. We're predicting that it won't turn in much of a buck for Disney, but this won't be the big hundred-million writeoff that they and many others had feared. 

Of course, all that could change by the time THE HUNGER GAMES rolls around, with pent-up excitement for that Suzanne Collins adaptation reaching and maybe even surpassing that of the Twilight series.