By Lee Pfeiffer
There was a time when director Robert Zemeckis was one of Hollywood's golden boys. His ground-breaking use of CGI in Forrest Gump was hailed as a milestone achievement in the 1990s and his Polar Express children's film has become a holiday perennial. However, it appears as though Zemeckis is now a victim the technology he helped pioneer. In the past, moviegoers complained there were too few family films in release. Now, it's the opposite problem with studios belching out expensive, CGI-packed animated epics on a weekly basis. They have so many similar characters and elements that audiences are reacting with a major yawn. The latest film that Zemeckis helped produce, Mars Needs Moms, combines live action actors with computer graphics. The New York Times reports that the film is already considered one of the all-time box-office disasters with Disney taking a $100 million write off. Tens of millions more in losses could follow. The Times ranks it along such financial flops as The Adventures of Pluto Nash, Cutthroat Island and the much-troubled remake of The Alamo. (Contrary to popular legend, John Wayne's 1960 epic of the same name made money.) The movie marks Zemeckis' second disappointment for the studio, with his animated A Christmas Carol underperforming. Disney once had a golden touch in marketing family films. In the 1950s and 1960s, the studio produced countless profitable live-action comedies starring the likes of Hayley Mills, Fred MacMurray and Brian Keith. Those modestly-budgeted flicks may not have been blockbusters, but they brought in a good return on investment. In today's upside down movie industry, executives somehow allocated $175 million to make and market Mars Needs Moms.
The Times speculates that the abundance of 3-D movies has already bored audiences. Instead of using the technology sparingly for "event movies", such as in the days of Cinerama, seemingly every other movie is now in 3-D. Audiences are also protesting against the premium prices charged to see 3-D movies at a time when taking your family to see any movie requires a king's ransom. Disney studio execs are not trying to sugar-coat the reception accorded Mars, and acknowledge the film was a total misfire. The first casualty is Zemeckis himself: even before Mars was released, Disney must have had a premonition. The studio pulled the plug on his much-typed remake of The Beatles' Yellow Submarine. For more click here