Disney's Biggest Flop is Making a Comeback

In a shocking move, it looks like John Carter, one of Disney’s largest flops of all time, is coming back in a significant way. Here’s everything we know.

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2023 was a challenging year for the Walt Disney Company. While they found some success with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023), The Little Mermaid (2023), and (eventually) Elemental (2023), all of its other releases bombed gloriously.

While it may be easy to think that any of these were the worst things to happen to Walt Disney Pictures, you’d be wrong. There’s always John Carter.

Based on the novel A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter follows a Confederate Army captain after he finds himself in the middle of a conflict on Mars. The movie starred Taylor Kitsch as John Carter, Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris, Samantha Morton as Sola, Willem Dafoe as Tars Tarkas, Thomas Haden Church as Tal Hajus, Mark Strong as Matai Shang,  Ciarán Hinds as Tardos Mors, and many more.

Directed by Andrew Stanton, the mind behind Finding Nemo (2003) and WALL-E (2008), and written by Stanton, Mark Andrews, and Michael Chabon, the film opened to mixed reviews and was a box office flop, earning $284.1 million on a $350 million budget. To this day, it is considered the biggest bomb in Disney’s history. And now, it looks like it is actually coming back.

John Carter is Coming Back From the Dead

Related: 10 Underrated Disney Movie Flops That Deserved Much, Much More

After John Carter didn’t meet Disney’s expectations, the company gave the rights to the books back to Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. Since then, there have been many attempts to bring the franchise back. Now, it looks like a major project will be released in just over a month.

Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. has created a website that simply reads “John Carter is Coming” over a red planet similar to Mars. It has a countdown with just over 32 days left as of March 29, 2024. This means that fans of the series will see something new from Captain Carter at the beginning of May.

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However, what exactly this could be remains to be seen. While it could be a movie or television series, some think that we’ll actually see a game based on the franchise. Not only does it cost a bit less than making another epic film, but it will be easier to convince a video game studio than a movie studio with the franchise’s cinematic reputation.

That being said, there’s really no way of knowing what fans will find once May arrives. The only thing they can do is wait and hope for the best.

Are you interested in a new John Carter project? Let Inside the Magic know in the comments down below!