It was at the dinner table roughly 15 years ago when the son of famous cartoonist and children’s author Berkeley Breathed (of Opus and Bloom County fame) proclaimed his utter disgust for being served broccoli, sparking a heated debate between the boy and his mother, with the child exclaiming, “I wish I’d never had a mother!” Breathed’s son had unintentionally sparked an idea for his father, who soon after went to work on his next children’s book, Mars Needs Moms!. Little did he know at the time, however, that his idea would go on to be the inspiration behind one of the largest box office bombs of all time.
Being allocated a large budget of $150 million by Disney and their newly acquired motion-capture animation department ImageMovers Digital, Mars Needs Moms was set for a March 2011 release, with established animation director Simon Wells (The Prince of Egypt) at the helm. The film hoped to utilize cutting-edge motion and face capture technology in order to give it a distinct and realistic look, an idea that executives at the time saw as “the future of animation.”
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
It seemed the future had other plans in mind however, as the film was a massive financial disaster which made back only $39 million of its budget, equaling about $111 million dollars in losses for Disney, not including the rumored $60 million spent on advertising. Over ten years after its release, and being forgotten by nearly everyone, it’s time to strap in and learn the story of Disney’s most costly misstep to date. This is the story of one of the biggest box office bombs, Mars Needs Moms!
The Future of Animation
ImageMovers were no naive new startup by 2011, and in fact had a decent collection of films under their belts by the time Disney came along. They began in 1997, being founded by director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future), and pioneering the use of motion capture animation in films, creating some well received hits of their own, including the beloved holiday classic Polar Express. The success rate of ImageMovers repertoire caught the eye of Disney, who kept its finger on the pulse of any new advancements in the world of animation, and together the two companies created the joint venture ImageMovers Digital, and produced their first fully motion captured film A Christmas Carol in 2009.
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Being a generally well-liked and enjoyable adaption of the classic Dickens tale, A Christmas Carol raked in about $125 million in profits alone, becoming a decent success for the new studio; its bizarre animation divided audiences and critics, though, with some thinking it was just too deep of a trip down the uncanny valley. Despite its success, Disney remained unimpressed, expecting much more of a splash out of what was meant to be the ultimate animation game-changer.
ImageMovers Digital was promptly shut down in 2010 after the release of its first film, with Disney execs getting cold feet on the entire deal, as well as feeling the effects of an economic recession at the time. Before the studio could fully shutter its doors, its second and final production was still underway, and with the company already turning its back on the whole concept, the unfortunate truth for Mars Needs Moms became clear – it was doomed from the start.
From Page to Screen
The overall story maintained much of the same narrative beats and themes as the original book, making necessary expansions to meet a feature length film’s running time. The movie follows a young mischievous boy named Milo (named after Breathed’s own son and inspiration) who spends his time giving back-talk and taking his mother for granted. When Martians come to abduct Milo’s mother and bring her back to their home planet, he sneaks aboard and goes on a rescue mission to bring her back to Earth, meeting bizarre Mars inhabitants along the way.
Characters were redesigned with an emphasis on creating realistic looking people and settings, a decision that ultimately ended up sabotaging any potential success for the project. ImageMovers Digital chugged along as usual, despite their impending dismantlement, hoping that their project would stun audiences with its photo-realistic visuals and one-to-one human movement capture. Meanwhile, Disney was willing to take the inevitable financial hit and move on, their hopes being for it not to leave too much of a dent. Unfortunately for both parties, all hopes would be crushed upon release, and it all came down to one culprit.
The film was hideous. What little audience remained after seeing the grotesque promotional material would go on to pan the movie for being incredibly difficult to sit through. Critics chalked it up to the film’s visuals being in the uncanny valley, close to realistic, but just enough away to look off-putting and uncomfortable. The most nightmare-inducing aspect of all being the design of the Martians, who possessed eerily large human eyes and mouths, with large teeth and no nose. The film’s overall standard story wasn’t enough to carry interest throughout, and when compared to the look of 2009’s Avatar, released two years prior, Mars Needs Moms became an embarrassment for Disney, who desperately searched for shelter from the massive bomb.
Author’s Reaction and Fallout
With the release of the movie being a disaster, ImageMovers Digital shut its doors for the final time. Though being a partnership between Zemeckis’ animation studio and Disney, the original ImageMovers were able to continue as they always did, though shying away from fully motion captured animated films and instead opting to do live-action with animated elements. The two companies have looked past their previous failure and plan to work together again in this year’s live-action remake of Pinocchio.
As for Berkeley Breathed, the original creator of the Mars Needs Moms property, going on to create more comic strips and children’s books seemed like the best way to shake off the damage; he returned to his long-retired Bloom County comic strip in 2015. When asked by the Hollywood Reporter for his opinion of Disney’s flop, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist simply drew an image of his original aliens looking perplexed at a poster depicting the alien designs used in the film. Breathed has bounced back into the world of animation since, and has recently signed on with Fox to co-write and executive produce an animated series adaptation of his popular Bloom County comic.
While all participants involved seemed to have moved on to bigger and better things, Mars Needs Moms will always remain in the back of many animation and film fan’s minds, and not just because of the horrific visuals. It’s not often that a movie bombs hard enough to shelf an entire animation style, being one of the last fully motion captured films released since 2011 and managing to turn off whoever was left wondering if it really was the “future of animation,” or if it was just an exciting new process that wasn’t yet capable of achieving what it set out to do. For those looking to enjoy the story of Mars Needs Moms, the age-old expression rings truest here – the book was much better.
