Disney Avoiding "John Carter" Marketing Mistakes With "The Avengers"

With "The Avengers", Disney is trying to avoid all the marketing mistakes that they made with "John Carter", hoping to create a blockbuster and avoid another disaster.

The company is avoiding mistakes it made with “John Carter,” said Peter Sealey, a former Columbia Pictures executive who is now a consultant. He cited a “Carter” trailer that didn’t excite viewers, a change in the studio’s top marketing officer two months before the release and the removal of the identifying words “of Mars” from the title.

“It was a huge marketing failure,” Sealey said, adding Disney will “get the train back on the track.”

Disney has been stoking interest in ‘The Avengers’’ since at least July 2010, when the stars and director Joss Whedon appeared at the annual Comic-Con International convention in San Diego. The film premieres today at the Disney-run El Capitan theater in Los Angeles, before going into wide release.

Certainly, unlike "John Carter", there is a large, built-in following already to the characters in "The Avengers", so there is already an audience for it. It certainly won't be a flop, but will it be the blockbuster that Disney is hoping for? That will require the rest of the population that aren't diehard fans of these characters to be interested enough to go see this movie.

Zz.