One of the most poorly-marketed box office flops ever is in the works for Blu-ray, and Canada will be getting metal packaging exclusive to Future Shop stores.
Based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ classic novel ‘A Princess of Mars’, Disney’s big-budget sci-fi action/adventure follows a Civil War soldier named John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) who is teleported to the red planet, where he at first becomes a slave, and eventually a hero.
Not much is known about this particular release yet, but some sample images of the metal packaging have already surfaced on Future Shop’s forums.
The front cover features a predominantly red background with an image of the title character. It’s not bad, but not great either. I’m hoping that the final version looks better. Take a look below:
It seems the back is even less exciting, unfortunately:
The inside has an action sequence with Carter and a couple of those gigantic Martian beasties. From the number of disc hubs in the picture, it looks like this release might include the 3D edition (though that’s unconfirmed at the moment):
Finally, the last image posted on Future Shop’s web site is a shot of the spine:
A release date, price and region coding info for this Canadian exclusive ‘John Carter’ Blu-ray metal pack have yet to be determined. Future Shop also doesn’t ship outside of Canada.
Barsoom Bob
If you are even remotely interested in the colossal marketing mistakes and political and finacial intrigues at Disney that pretty much doomed this movie before it opened, goggle thejohncarterfiles and go to the site. This fellow Michael, the organizer of the site and code name Dotar Sojat, has written some fine articles and is currently expanding and putting it together for an ebook that will be available just before the street date for the release of the home video.
I know this is for metal covers but the regular cover is just more of the same no so great white monkey business, on the site there are many fan made covers, sized for DVD and Blu, that have much better variations that you can print out to replace the ones that coming from “thanks for nothing” Disney. Several are based off the cool Mondo poster and one harks back to classic Star Wars.
JM
A lot of movies are killed by secret studio cock fights.
‘John Carter’ was DOA the moment the Burroughs’ estate sold the rights to Disney.
I wish that Robert Rodriguez’s version, set up at Paramount, shot like ‘Sin City,’ based on Frank Frazetta’s art style, would have been the one that got made.
Optimistically, since the PG-13 version epic failed, the probability for an R-Rated reboot in a couple of years is much more likely.
So maybe this is a win-win.
Barsoom Bob
Or, like Dune, it will become an under funded Sy-Fy mini series.
It did occur to me it might be cool to give different directors a shot at the other books.
The TJCF lead me to a ERB site that had tons of pre-production art from the Kerry Conran version. Much more Frazetta-ish with the requisite sexiness and swagger with fantastic architecture.
This movie isn’t really all that bad, it just needed a lot less exposition, but it has heart, a real romance, action and beautiful digitally enhanced real landscapes.