But so far the opening numbers aren't holding well at all in most markets, much like in the North American market. It's just like many predicted: curiosity and lack of competition pushed the movie to #1 in the first week (which is very relative when outside the blockbuster season), but word of mouth is killing it. And a great deal of the positive reviews are full of caveat and warnings that the movie will appeal to a certain kind of audience only (including that the movie is too violent and "complex" for kids, but too immature to have much appeal to a lot of adults. This was always a recipe for disaster).

"Doing great" oversea, enough to have a real impact on the movie's global success is like Spielberg's adaptation of Tintin (which got something like 75 millions domestic - it did not manage to interest adults - and 300 millions abroad, where adults grew up with the character). John Carter isn't having this kind of reception, not at the BO, and not from reviews and word of mouth. It's got a fine opening in South America and Russia, but in Europe even where it did OK the first week the numbers aren't holding well at all, and the "fame" of the work is very relative outside the US (I've read local Canadian reviews and some from francophone Europe, most of them mentions the "fame" of ERB - from Tarzan - but admitted they never even had heard of this series. It's the same for the audience). It's initial success in Russia isn't surprising, but Tom is perfectly right - the Russian market is highly unreliable. It sounds like the movie made its fill of theater-goers and it's impressive itself, but the market is dominated by piracy and BO numbers don't hold long there (the movie already dropped from 16 to 6 millions on week 2).

This means in the usual key oversea markets past the third "compulsory" week the theaters are held to, the movie will lose a way too great percentage of its screens and the BO will plummet, and very fast. John Carter is received positively almost exclusively by viewers and reviewers "sold" to the space opera genre. In many ways it vindicates George Lucas, who despite his vocal "older" fanbase who thought they knew better, always believed space opera appealed mostly to kids and produced the prequels with this primary audience in mind. He got tons of very bad reviews - most of which lost their time stating the film had little interest for adults and that Jar-Jar would annoy anyone above 12 - and the enduring bitterness of a vocal fraction of the adults still into SW - but fabulous BO prolonged through summer by the success with the younger audience (and the love for the franchise is enduring among kids, some not even born by the time of TPM).

With its price tag, John Carter needed to reach way behind the space opera fans (get oversea numbers similar to The Phantom Menace) and get a long wide run in theaters, which it doesn't appear to be doing in the least in big oversea markets like France, UK, Germany, Japan (haven't seen any numbers for Japan yet, though - it's a big market for this sort of movie). It's not defying expectations and building audience on word of mouth that would have prolonged its initial wide run for a few weeks, it's doing exactly as Disney feared it would, and why they made sure it wouldn't be that movie they'd offer during the more competitive season.

It was a very bad choice of material to adapt at this point in time. Doing it after the SW prequels was high risk (because the novelty effect of a post-OT space opera with new technical means - another aspect of the PT's success -is lost, and because the trilogy has shown that "classic" space opera had very limited appeal with adults outside the genre fans), not making sure the movie would appeal and be suitable for the younger audience (or alternatively to remove everything that would feel silly and immature and make it intelligent enough to convince a wide adult audience to follow - the way Jackson has done with LOTR) was plain stupid. The director had proven with his Pixar work he knew how to make movies for kids, but it's a puzzle why Disney (that no doubt greenlit the project having some expectations this would be a great all-audience film, a new SW) didn't make him stick to that. The source material has been pillaged by Hollywood for way too long for the adaptation to feel fresh to anyone not already big fans of the books or the genre, and the themes presented by the movie are also stale. That's nowhere enough to rentabilize an (estimated) 350 millions movie. Huge miscalculation from Disney.