Disney facing its biggest ever flop

Walt Disney says it expects to lose about $200 million on its John Carter film, making it one of the biggest flops in cinema …

Walt Disney says it expects to lose about $200 million on its John Carter film, making it one of the biggest flops in cinema history.

The film, about a Civil War veteran transported to Mars, cost an estimated $250 million to produce and it is likely that Disney spent another $100m on marketing.

It is based on a 100-year-old series of novels by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs. It  marked the live- action debut for writer-director Andrew Stanton, who won Oscars for Finding Nemo and Wall-E, at Pixar.

The loss exceeded the estimate of Alan Gould, an analyst at Evercore Partners in New York. He  said Disney is unlikely to commit such a sum again to an untested project.

"It'll have to be an established franchise," said Mr Gould.

Disney shares fell 0.8 per cent to $43.10 in New York this morning.

The shares had advanced 16 per cent this year before today.

To boost profitability, the Disney studio has been making fewer films and trying to focus on films with multipicture potential, such as Pixar's animated features and the  Pirates of Caribbean series.