John Carter, the Disney box office disaster that ended Taylor Kitsch’s career

“For the past 15 years, I have been fortunate to work with incredibly talented people for the world’s most beloved brand. I don’t think the role of President is now the right professional role for me. For this reason “I have made the difficult decision to resign as Chairman of Walt Disney Studios, effective today.”

These were the terms of an e-mail sent to all Disney employees by Rich Ross, resigning CEO, in mid-April 2012. The reason? Barely a fortnight earlier, the theatrical release of John Carter, signed by Andrew Stanton, a former Pixar genius still crowned by the success of his sublime Wall-E, was an absolute financial disaster.

Disney’s biggest flop ever

This blockbuster anticipated a connected universe and pulled out all the stops with a budget estimated between $250 and $307 million, but it only collected $284 million at the worldwide box office, including barely 73 million on American soil. . Disney’s estimated losses were around $200 million. Never seen.

Adjusted for inflation, these losses would today be estimated at more than $270 million. Enough to measure the extent of the earthquake at the time, and even still today. John Carter is one of the most terrible box office flops ever seen.

Taylor Kitsch, fallen angel

Launched on very good rails by playing in the series Friday Night Lights then by playing the character of Gambit in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the Canadian actor Taylor Kitsch was well on his way to a great launch into orbit.

THE Hollywood Reporter had even placed him in the list of talents to follow closely, as being an actor potentially likely to enter the very closed class of the A-List of Hollywood stars.

And that obviously was before the John Carter disaster, which brought this momentum to a sudden halt. In his misfortune, the blow was delivered less than a month later, with the release of a second devastating box office fiasco, Battleship.

With its colossal budget of more than $200 million (to which we must, of course, always add that of marketing), the film only grossed $303 million.

A rebound above all on TV

Such bitter failures at the box office, in such financial proportions, have completely undermined the actor’s chances of returning to the top of the bill in such blockbusters.

That obviously doesn’t mean he hasn’t been able to bounce back. But it will be above all on the small screen. In notable series elsewhere. True Detective season 2, already. And especially the mini-series Waco, in 2018, where he very solidly embodies the guru David Koresh, leader of the Davidians sect.

Is redemption for John Carter possible? Taylor Kitsch believes in it in any case, thanks to streaming, as he said at the microphone of the Hollywood Reporter : “People stop me about it all the time. I guess people watching it now for the first time can get a lot more out of it than they did at the beginning… Honestly, I don’t see it as a failure” .

Considerations held seven years after the release of the film, time for the wound to heal…