Fans of John Carter Planning a Second Movie

So when a major studio makes a movie for $350 million and needs to generate $600 million in box office sales, no one is surprised when the studio announces a $200 million loss after 6 weeks of good-but-not-good-enough box office sales. "John Carter" as everyone knows by now earned most of its money outside the United States, where young audiences stayed away in droves. The movie opened against "Dr. Seuss' The Lorax" and was subsequently clobbered by "The Hunger Games". With almost $300 million in ticket sales, "John Carter" has nonetheless failed to earn enough money for anyone inside Hollywood to give serious thought to making the 2 previously planned and promised sequels.
So that's that, right? Not so right.

8,000+ fans of John Carter on Facebook are organizing a promotional campaign to show the suits at Disney that they still have an opportunity to make millions -- no, HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of dollars off of "John Carter". And they're serious. So serious, in fact, they are talking about putting some money on the table to make things happen.

First up is a campaign to promote the June 5, 2012 release of the "John Carter" DvD and Blu-Ray. These disks can help reboot interest in the franchise, which in turn can lead merchandisers to consider acquiring licenses from Disney. This has actually happened before. In fact, it goes on all the time. If you can get merchandisers involved any TV or film franchise can build up new momentum.

Fans of cancelled TV shows and movie franchises like to look at the campaigns that brought back Star Trek, "Lost in Space", "The Beverly Hillbillies", "Knight Rider", "The Incredible Hulk", and other TV and film franchises. Some were more successful than others in their second lives. Saul Zaentz spun out his Lord of the Rings film and merchandising rights for 20 years after the Ralph Bakshi animated movie flopped (and the planned sequel to that film was never made).

So "John Carter" may be a done deal at the American box office but he's about to get his second wind. Maybe this time around Disney will see enough dollar signs to give serious consideration to reviving the franchise, maybe even to ask Andrew Stanton to continue his work.

Check out BackToBarsoom.com, which is sort of "John Carter 2" central for many fans. The "John Carter" fan community has also descended upon Facebook in a public fan page called John Carter - Back to Barsoom - The Sequel Campaign and a Back to Barsoom Group. The group is closed to search engines and is struggling to attract interested supporters. Michael D. Sellers, who launched the campaign, is contemplating adding a Web forum to BackToBarsoom.com or some other Website. We'll announce more information here as it comes in.
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