title: John Carter (film)

text: Shooting with a 3D release in mind was considered but dropped over a year before principal photography. The camera crew and effects specialists viewed Disney's "Alice in Wonderland", where space on the set was planned with the 3D release in mind. They realized that the processes used for that film would be outdated before they could expect that they would start "John Carter", so there was no point in planning for 3D; Stanton also believed that would be too much to deal with while shooting in any event. Mindel said that was "a huge relief".


title: John Carter (film)

text: Work on the visual effects had begun even earlier, in 2009, before the release of "Avatar", which revolutionized the field. The effects team doing proof-of-process tests realized when that movie came out that "John Carter" would require extensive use of all the techniques that "Avatar" had pioneered, and would go where that film had not with many more interactions between human actors and CGI characters. Peter Chiang, the film's visual effects supervisor at Double Negative in London, wrote a production bible for the latter that described how each character should be composed and framed. Bruce McCleery, the second unit's director of photography, said that bible was especially useful for scenes blending humans and CGI characters. "Working that out was much more complex than it sounds."


title: John Carter (film)

text: Shooting the airship battle on a London soundstage required extensive preproduction work. Mindel and the lighting crew started work designing the lighting rig for that scene long before shooting started. They shared their work with the effects teams, which used Lidar to map it, as it did for every set. The sets housed the full airship models, mounted on gimbals with green screen on all sides. Ultimately, to stage an aerial battle with light-based weapons where the ships maneuver to block the sunlight that powers their opponents' craft, the lighting crew used 120 Spacelights, 15 Dino light banks, flashing lights and a crane mounted with soft lights and green screens that could fill in ambient light from the film's sky.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Once production moved to the Utah desert, the weather added its own challenges. Heavy winds brought frequent sandstorms, forcing many on location to work while wearing goggles and sometimes burnooses. Mindel wanted the film to take advantage of these conditions as much as possible, although he had to tone it down slightly so the effects teams could do their job. "All the uncontrollable natural phenomena did give the film a visceral, unpredictable quality, and contributed to its unique, idiosyncratic texture," McCleery said.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Before the formal reshoot, which took place throughout September in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Playa Vista, Stanton told "The New Yorker" he had done some smaller-scale reshooting focusing on additional dialogue for some characters in order to address the issues the preview had raised. In London, he shot scenes where West, as Sab Than, clarified the Therns' goals. Back in Los Angeles, Kitsch and Collins filmed Carter's proposal scene. Then Stanton went back to London to film Strong's side of the conversation with Sab Than. Stanton denied assertions that he had gone over budget and stated that he had been allowed a longer reshoot because he had stayed on budget and on time.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Stanton reshot much of the movie twice, far more than was common in live action filmmaking at that time. He attributed that to his animation background. "The thing I had to explain to Disney was, 'You're asking a guy who's only known how to do it this way to suddenly do it with one reshoot.'" he explained later. "I said, 'I'm not gonna get it right the first time, I'll tell you that right now.'" Stanton often sought advice from people he had worked with at Pixar on animated films (known as the Braintrust) instead of those with live-action experience working with him.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Stanton also was quoted as saying, "Is it just me, or do we actually know how to do this better than live-action crews do?" Rich Ross, Disney's chairman, successor to Dick Cook, who had originally approved the film for production, came from a television background and had no experience with feature films. The studio's new top marketing and production executives had little more.


title: John Carter (film)

text: "New Yorker" writer Tad Friend visited the set during the reshoot and wrote an article about it, noting that it was "unusually extensive (and expensive)". Collins and Kitsch both made comments on the record about the reshoot that seemed defensive; Stanton told Friend not only that if it had been up to him he would have insisted on a second reshoot but that reshoots should be "mandatory". It has subsequently been suggested that this article began the media narrative that "John Carter" was in serious trouble, as conventional Hollywood wisdom held that "any" reshoot was an indicator of a troubled production.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Collins believes that the reshoot was detrimental for her character. Originally filmed as a strong, independent warrior, the scenes added, such as those with her father, made her seem more vulnerable; and scenes like those in which she had slapped Carter were cut. She believes the studio wanted a softer take on Thoris and was reduced to asking Stanton every day what would work with that and just doing it.


title: John Carter (film)

text: After the reshoot, considerable work remained in post-production on Stanton's first cut, reportedly almost three hours long. There were many effects and CGI shots to finish. Stanton recalls that "[t]here were more animated shots in what was left to do on "Carter" than an entire animated feature". Animating the Tharks, especially in large numbers during battle scenes, proved particularly challenging; the software had to be upgraded for it, and as one animator recalls, work scenes sometimes took three hours to open. Many of those working on the CGI were particularly appreciative of Stanton, since due to his background he had considerable expertise in the area and made himself more available than directors of such films usually are.


title: John Carter (film)

text: The filmmakers believe that the decisions made in marketing the film were the primary reason for its failure. A new studio executive team with minimal experience in that side of the business was in charge, and not as emotionally invested in its success as the filmmakers had been. Furthermore, unbeknownst to them, Disney CEO Robert Iger had already begun talks with George Lucas about buying Lucasfilm and the "Star Wars" franchise, eliminating any incentive the company had to launch a successful competing film franchise. "John Carter"s marketing campaign has been called one of the worst in movie history.


title: John Carter (film)

text: The head of Walt Disney Studios Marketing during the production was M T Carney, an industry outsider who previously ran a boutique marketing firm in New York with no previous experience marketing movies. Stanton often rejected marketing ideas from the studio, according to those who worked on the film. His ideas were used instead, and he ignored criticism that using a cover version of Led Zeppelin's 1975 song "Kashmir" in the trailer released in conjunction with an ad aired during that year's Super Bowl would make it seem less current to the contemporary younger audiences the film sought.


title: John Carter (film)

text: He also chose billboard imagery that failed to resonate with prospective audiences, and put together a preview reel that did not get a strong reception from a convention audience. Stanton said, "My joy when I saw the first trailer for "Star Wars" is I saw a little bit of almost everything in the movie, and I had no idea how it connected, and I had to go see the movie. So the last thing I'm going to do is ruin that little kid's experience." Following the death of Steve Jobs, Stanton dedicated the film in his memory.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Disney reportedly grew more concerned about the film's prospects after the 2011 failure of the Lionsgate remake of "Conan the Barbarian". Like "John Carter", it was based on a popular fantasy franchise that had during the 1980s been adapted into successful films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Lionsgate's version had cost $90 million and starred Jason Momoa. Chabon recalls reading a Quora post by one of its screenwriters, Sean Hood, about how he dealt with the movie's failure, and for the first time worrying about the possibility that "John Carter" could suffer the same fate.


title: John Carter (film)

text: "Cowboys & Aliens", released in July, also had an effect on "John Carter". It, too, had science fiction and western elements, and while not a failure commercially was seen as a disappointment, barely recouping its high budget. That was taken as indicating that contemporary audiences were not interested in westerns, or any film set in the American past, so those elements would be downplayed in the trailers and other marketing for "John Carter".


title: John Carter (film)

text: One of Disney's own recent big-budget franchise films was also adding to executives' anxieties about "John Carter". The May 2011 release of "" had done well at the box office, becoming the third highest-grossing film domestically that year and making over a billion dollars worldwide. However, the film's budget, exceeding $400 million by some estimates, made it the most expensive film ever produced. Its profits were thus lower than a film that popular might have been expected to generate, making Disney fear the same could happen with "John Carter". By the time of the reshoot four months after "On Stranger Tides", it was reported that "John Carter" would have to make at least $700 million worldwide, more than twice its escalating production costs, to justify a sequel.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Initially expectations of the film's commercial success were high. The studio held a sneak preview in mid-2011, before the reshoot, in Portland, Oregon. Stanton, who had been diagnosed with high-functioning attention deficit hyperactivity disorder early in the process of writing the script, was so nervous he took lorazepam not just on the flight there but before the preview, and four Disney executives were in attendance to watch the reactions of 400 filmgoers and read their opinions afterwards. The audience reactions seemed to indicate that audiences were engaged with the film and laughed when they were supposed to, which relaxed Stanton.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Afterwards, many of them rated the film as "very good" or "excellent", for an average audience approval rating of 75 percent, which pleased the studio. Carney said that that number could probably be rounded up to 80, reflecting work that had yet to be done. According to the preview cards, that work would also include improving the pacing of the film's second act, making the motivations of the Therns clearer, and developing the relationship between Carter and Thoris so that their wedding at the end was not so much of a surprise.


title: John Carter (film)

text: The film's title was a major issue; there are several accounts of who decided to change it and why. It is largely based on the first book of the series, "A Princess of Mars", but was originally titled "John Carter of Mars". Stanton changed the title to that from the book's title early in 2011, "because not a single boy would go." Later he removed "of Mars" to make it more appealing to a broader audience, calling the film an "origin story ... about a guy "becoming" John Carter of Mars." Disney also reportedly believed that the sex appeal of the popular Kitsch being shirtless throughout the movie would draw women to see the film. Since women are believed by Hollywood to be averse to science fiction, in this account, "Mars" was excised from the title.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Stanton planned to keep "Mars" in the title for the never-made future films in the series. Kitsch said the title was changed to reflect the character's journey, as John Carter would become "of Mars" only in the film's last few minutes. Former Disney marketing president Carney has also been blamed for suggesting the title change.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Another reported explanation for the name change was that Disney had suffered a significant loss in March 2011 with "Mars Needs Moms"; Carney reportedly conducted a study which noted recent movies with the word "Mars" in the title had not been commercially successful. Chabon responds that all those films were poorly regarded by critics.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Despite the name change, some hints of the original title remain. Some promotional materials used the stylized "JCM" logo, and at the end of the film is a title card with "John Carter of Mars". The marketing team had yielded to Stanton on that, and he explained that "it means something by the end of the movie, and if there are more movies I want that to be what you remember."


title: John Carter (film)

text: After the film's release and subsequent failure, the truncated title was seen as part of the problem. "What the hell is John Carter? What's the film about?" asked Peter Sealey, former marketing president at Columbia, told the "Los Angeles Times". " I don't know who John Carter is. You've got to make that clear." Stanton reportedly believed there was enough awareness of the books that this would not be a problem, to which another marketing executive responded, "People don't say, 'I know what I'll be for Halloween! I'll be John Carter!'"


title: John Carter (film)

text: The film's teaser trailer released in August 2011 was also seen as poor marketing. It relied largely on visual imagery from the film, without saying much about the creators and their previous accomplishments, or Burroughs's work and how it had influenced later science fiction universes like "Star Wars". There was little effects or action; Stanton has denied a rumor that that was because he did not have enough finished effects shots to use. Disney executives have faulted Stanton for this, since his success at Pixar allowed him to demand and get control over "John Carter"s trailers.


title: John Carter (film)

text: They reportedly strongly implored him to listen to their suggestions and he refused. "This is one of the worst marketing campaigns in the history of movies," a former studio marketing chief complained to "Vulture" shortly before the film opened. "It's almost as if they went out of their way to "not" make us care." After the full trailer, and the Super Bowl ad derived from it seemed similarly bland, enough for Kitsch to publicly concur with criticisms of the film's marketing campaign, a fan group online put out a competing trailer meant to address the official one's deficiencies. During February 2012, new television ads emphasizing story points were launched, and a similarly-cut trailer was attached to "Act of Valor".


title: John Carter (film)

text: After several weeks away from her office, Carney left at the beginning of 2012, with four years remaining on her contract, to be replaced by Ricky Strauss, former president of Participant Media, for the beginning of the period immediately preceding the film's release when promotional efforts become more intensive. He committed to spending over $100 million to that end. Sealey called the change in marketing leadership "[t]he worst thing that can happen to a movie" as it adversely affects the morale of the cast and crew, who often have to promote the film personally in the media.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Disney moved the film's release up to early March 2012 from June, giving it just two box office weekends before Lionsgate's "The Hunger Games", widely expected to do very well and compete for the same audience, came out. As that date approached, the usual aspects of Disney's marketing pushes for big-budget tentpole films were noticeably absent. There were no large merchandise displays in the company's online and retail stores, nor at big-box stores like Target. Nor were there prominently placed ads in the company's theme parks, or coverage on Disney-owned media such as the ABC broadcast network or The Disney Channel. "It needs to feel like an event, and right now it doesn't feel like an event," an unnamed marketing expert told "The Hollywood Reporter".


title: John Carter (film)

text: Instead, the company tried some alternative marketing approaches. Stanton gave a TED talk on storytelling, that had a short scene from "John Carter" as an example of one of his points. While that was seen as effective, some other promotions, such as an "Are You The Real John Carter?" contest, in which men who could prove that was their real name were encouraged to enter a contest where winners would be invited to a special fan screening, were not.


title: John Carter (film)

text: As the premiere date neared, some of the filmmakers were unaware of the negative press coverage already attached to the movie. Mindel and Stanton admitted later that they were somewhat oblivious due to largely being in contact only with those whom they had been working with in post-production. Collins said those who worked for her and followed media coverage kept that information from her.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Dafoe, on the other hand, was aware that the media were lowering the public and the industry's expectations for the film: "[M]y recollection was that even before it was released, there were grumblings about it ... everything from the name change to regime change to poor publicity. But I remember before the movie was even seen, people were counting it out."


title: John Carter (film)

text: Tracking data, the results of long-term surveys of likely filmgoers to judge their interest in seeing an upcoming film upon its release, with a prediction of its opening weekend box office, for "John Carter" was returned to Disney in mid-February and shared both within and without the company. Nikki Finke reported in "Deadline Hollywood" that the numbers pointed to a serious failure. Barely half the likely audience was aware of the film, 27 percent said they were interested in seeing it, and only 3 percent said it would be their first choice that weekend.


title: John Carter (film)

text: An executive at a rival studio told Finke that demographic data with the "shocking" tracking for such a costly film showed that women in particular "have flat out rejected the film" and expected "the biggest writeoff of all time." Finke reported that she had heard estimates of a loss around $100 million, but allowed that soft numbers had been widely expected as Disney's in-house surveys had been showing them for some time. Disney told her that the Super Bowl ad had given the film an expected "pop of awareness" and the studio remained committed to a full marketing push before the release.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Chabon says that on the eve of the premiere, he was in a hotel down the street and Disney's marketing department was showing the team the latest tracking. "None of it was good", he recalled. Despite doubts and awareness of previous occasions when such dire forecasts had been wide of the mark, "[w]e just all kind of knew at that point it was going to be bad. It was not going to go well."


title: John Carter (film)

text: Just before the film was released, an Evercore analyst who followed Disney more than doubled his estimate of the likely loss, to $165 million, because of the tracking. Other analysts had similarly revised their estimates upward, to $100 million or more.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Disney scheduled the late February premiere for Regal's LA Live Theatre in downtown Los Angeles, rather than the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, which it owned and had renovated extensively. The choice of venue has been described as "odd", since Disney had held most of its premieres, particularly of big-budget franchise films, there since the renovation. In a news release announcing the premiere, Disney highlighted that the movie would be shown in 3D on a screen to an audience of 800 in three theaters, ranging from the cast and crew and company executives to critics, D23 members and winners of contests.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Collins, still unaware of the negative media perception of the film, recalls walking in and going down the red carpet behind Kitsch. She saw Ross call him over and whisper something in his ear, after which he suddenly stepped back. When she caught up to Kitsch, she asked what Ross had told him that had so affected him. " 'It's a disaster.' He just told me, 'It's going to be a fucking disaster.'"


title: John Carter (film)

text: In the "LA Times" the week after the release, industry insiders suggested two reasons the film might have struggled to succeed with audiences regardless of how well it had been made or marketed. One was that more recent franchises, such as "Star Wars", that had derived and borrowed from Burroughs' original concepts in the century since it had been written had exhausted the potential for audiences to be enthralled by any modern adaptation of his work. Jacks, the producer who had tried to make a film of the work in the early 2000s, recalled having given director Robert Zemeckis the novels in order to interest him in the project. "I don't think so," Zemeckis told him after reading them. "George [Lucas] has really plundered these books."


title: John Carter (film)

text: Another industry marketing person, speaking anonymously, told the "Times" that modern audiences have a "cognitive dissonance" problem with films set on Mars based on older works. At the time Burroughs wrote, little was known about conditions on Mars, allowing an author to fill in those gaps with invented details. However, modern audiences know from the many actual unmanned missions to Mars that that planet is uninhabitable and apparently devoid of life. "You're not able to sell [Burroughs's vision]", he said.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Two of the film's supporting cast members weighed in later in the year on the role marketing played in its poor box office performance in separate interviews with "The A.V. Club". In July, Cranston called its cool reception "unwarranted" and blamed it on TV stations around the country focusing on commercial news about how "John Carter" had underperformed and not even won its opening weekend rather than offering a review of the film, leading viewers to make their decisions about what movie to see on that basis. "Why is it all of a sudden important for average Americans to know how much money a movie made at the box office?"


title: John Carter (film)

text: "I don’t know why it's done so badly, or that it's perceived as being the [biggest] flop in Hollywood history", West said four months later. "It's not that bad at all." He defended Stanton and the film, calling the former "a fucking "genius"" and noting that the reviews actually had not been very bad. West disclosed also that after production, in 2010, he had seen a marketing plan for the film that was never used, which he believed would have been much more effective than what Disney chose to do.


title: John Carter (film)

text: In 2020 "Screen Rant"s Kayleigh Donaldson reiterated the earlier arguments that Stanton's Pixar-based filmmaking process had unnecessarily increased costs, and that the film's ensuing bloated production budget made it harder to be profitable, as had been the case with "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides". She noted that all but one of the 10 most expensive films ever made had been made in the last decade, and all but one of those nine had been Disney productions. "This is now the status quo for blockbuster cinema, an era of too-big-to-fail filmmaking that is almost exclusively reliant on international grosses just to break even." Of those eight Disney films, "John Carter" was the only one not part of an existing franchise. That large budget was necessary to faithfully and credibly replicate Burroughs's vision onscreen, but at the same time audiences were accustomed enough to expensive CGI and effects spectacles that that alone could not be expected to impress them.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Donaldson also criticized the titling, noting that the early decision to not use the book title, "A Princess of Mars", "raised a lot of questions over who Disney wanted to sell the movie to", implying that the studio feared that men might not be interested in a movie with "Princess" in the title, despite Disney's own experience to the contrary with its many princess movies. Stripping it down to just "John Carter" "robbed the movie of its identity ... as a title [it] conveyed nothing to potential audiences about the movie they were being sold."


title: John Carter (film)

text: Stanton's stated reason for the latter move, that the narrative is about how John Carter becomes John Carter of Mars, also, to Donaldson, points to another problem that has beset other films adapted from series with multiple books. "In an effort to play catch-up to a franchise that spent years developing its intricately woven multiple narratives, many studios tried to do the work of three or four movies in one", she wrote. "This resulted in a lot of franchise non-starters because audiences had little interest in films that existed solely to set up a bunch of sequels for a property they didn't care about." Among these she included "Artemis Fowl", "Robin Hood", and "". Likewise with "John Carter", the realization of Barsoom onscreen "wasn't enough to sustain a movie and didn’t entice enough people to invest in a trilogy that would never see the light of day."


title: John Carter (film)

text: Donaldson argued that in addition to being overtaken by works influenced by it, the Carter franchise was no longer popular enough to sustain an expensive film franchise by 2012, a century after the first book was published, an issue unintentionally highlighted by the use of "Kashmir" in the trailer. There still were fans, she conceded, but "[n]ame recognition alone does not make a movie hit. Just ask the most recent "Tarzan" reboot for evidence of that, or Disney's own attempt to make "The Lone Ranger" a 21st century action favorite", referring to the studio's 2013 effort, which also failed at the box office."


title: John Carter (film)

text: In February 2010, Michael Giacchino revealed in an interview he would be scoring the film. A year and a half later, in his "New Yorker" article, Friend documents accompanying Stanton on a visit to Giacchino where they discuss the movie's score and how it relates to the narrative. Stanton had put in the scratch music, the temporary music used to show what mood he wanted the actual score to reflect, himself rather than delegating that task to an editor as is commonly done. He told the composer that he wanted the music to reflect the two distinct plans driving the plot: Carter's and the Therns'. Stanton also said he wanted the music for Carter to change in a way that reflected his slow acceptance of himself as John Carter of Mars.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Stanton had used music from "" for the Therns; he wanted something similarly choral. With the opening voiceover and battle footage, he had put music from "Syriana" that sounded "dire and Middle Eastern and forlorn, like a culture clinging to its nobility." He suggested something similar to Giacchino as the "Mars theme", but advised against eventually merging it with Carter's theme. "[J]ust because you're master of the high seas doesn't mean you can't have a separate theme for the ocean." Giacchino agreed but suggested a different merger, doing the Mars theme chorally near the end of the film, to accentuate the Therns' apparently inevitable takeover of the planet, an idea Stanton eagerly accepted. Walt Disney Records released the soundtrack on March 6, 2012, three days before the film's release.


title: John Carter (film)

text: The original film release date was June 8, 2012. In January 2011 Disney moved the release date up three months to March 9 of that year. A teaser trailer for the film premiered on July 14 and was shown in 3D and 2D with showings of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2"; the official trailer premiered on November 30. On February 5, 2012 an extended commercial promoting the movie aired during the Super Bowl, and the day before the game, Stanton, a Massachusetts native, held a special screening of the film for both the team members and families of the New England Patriots and New York Giants, the competing teams.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released "John Carter" on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital download on June 5, 2012. The home media release was made available in three different physical packages: a four-disc combo pack (1 disc Blu-ray 3D, 1-disc Blu-ray, 1 DVD, and 1-disc digital copy), a two-disc combo pack (1 disc Blu-ray, 1 disc DVD), and one-disc DVD. "John Carter" was also made available in 3D High Definition, High Definition, and Standard Definition Digital. Additionally, the home media edition was available in an On-Demand format. The Blu-ray bonus features include Disney Second Screen functionality, "360 Degrees of John Carter", deleted scenes, and "Barsoom Bloopers". The DVD bonus features included "100 Years in the Making", and audio commentary with filmmakers. The High Definition Digital and Standard Definition Digital versions both include Disney Second Screen, "Barsoom Bloopers", and deleted scenes. The Digital 3D High Definition Digital copy does not include bonus features. In mid-June, the movie topped sales on both the Nielsen VideoScan First Alert sales chart, which tracks overall disc sales, and Nielsen's dedicated Blu-ray Disc sales chart, with the DVD release selling almost a million copies making $17 million and Blu-ray and 3-D releases selling almost as many copies making $19.2 million, for a combined total of $36.3 million in its first week alone.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Although the film grossed nearly $300 million worldwide, it lost a considerable amount of money due to its cost. At the time of its release, Disney claimed the film's production budget was $250 million, although tax returns released in 2014 revealed its exact budget was $263.7 million after taking tax credits into account. Before the film opened, analysts predicted the film would be a huge financial failure due to its exorbitant cost combined with production and marketing costs of $350 million, with Paul Dergarabedian, president of Hollywood.com, noting ""John Carter"'s bloated budget would have required it to generate worldwide tickets sales of more than $600 million to break even ... a height reached by only 63 films in the history of moviemaking". Within two weeks of its release, Disney took a $200 million writedown on the film, ranking it among the biggest box-office bombs of all time. Two months after the release, the Walt Disney Company released a statement on its earnings attributing the $161 million decline in the operating income of its Studio Entertainment division to a loss of $84 million in the quarter ending March 2012 "primarily" due to the performance of "John Carter" and the associated cost write-down.


title: John Carter (film)

text: On March 9, 2012, "John Carter" opened domestically in over 3,500 theaters, taking in almost $10 million, the highest grosses of any film released that day. It was the only time period for which that would be true. The following day, "The Lorax", the previous weekend's box office winner, which had lost that night to "John Carter" only by around $300,000, reasserted its primacy, grossing $18 million even as Disney's film improved to $12.3 million. "The Lorax" went on to win the weekend, with $38.8 million to "John Carter"s $30.1 million, which still made it the highest-grossing new release that weekend, easily beating "Silent House" and "A Thousand Words".


title: John Carter (film)

text: Domestically, both "The Lorax" and "John Carter" were displaced by the next weekend's winner, the newly released "21 Jump Street", which easily outgrossed both. "John Carter" stayed in all its theaters, but revenues dropped by more than half from the previous weekend, to $13 million. On the film's third weekend, its theater count dropped by approximately 500 as "The Hunger Games" arrived in theaters with a $152.5 million opening weekend; "John Carter"s receipts again more than halved, down to $5 million.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Throughout April, grosses and theaters continued to decline. Following that year's Easter weekend, it dropped out of the box office top 10, by which point it was in less than 500 theaters and earning less than a million dollars. "John Carter" experienced a slight resurgence on the first weekend of May, coinciding with the release of Disney's other expected tentpole for early 2012, "The Avengers", a Marvel film based on its popular comic franchise, when its theater count nearly doubled and grosses rose to $1.5 million, the last weekend they would reach seven figures. Disney again increased its theater count two weeks later, when "Battleship", also starring Kitsch, was released. But it did not boost the grosses, which steadily declined as it left more and more theaters through the end of June.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Outside North America, it topped the weekend chart, opening with $70.6 million. Its highest-grossing opening was in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), where it broke the all-time opening-day record ($6.5 million) and earned $16.5 million during the weekend. The film also scored the second-best opening weekend for a Disney film in China ($14.0 million). It was in first place at the box office outside North America for two consecutive weekends.


title: John Carter (film)

text: "John Carter" grossed $73.1 million in North America and $211.1 million in other countries, for a worldwide total , of $284.1 million. It had a worldwide opening of $100.8 million. Its highest-grossing areas after North America are China ($41.5 million), Russia and the CIS ($33.4 million), and Mexico ($12.1 million).


title: John Carter (film)

text: One week before the film's release, Disney removed an embargo on reviews of the film. The film holds a 52% rating at the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes based on 239 reviews, with an average rating of 5.80/10. The consensus reads: "While "John Carter" looks terrific and delivers its share of pulpy thrills, it also suffers from uneven pacing and occasionally incomprehensible plotting and characterization". At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average out of 100 to critics' reviews, the film holds a score of 51 based on 43 reviews, signifying "Mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Todd McCarthy of "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote, "Derivative but charming and fun enough, Disney's mammoth scifier is both spectacular and a bit cheesy". Glenn Kenny of MSN Movies rated the film 4 out of 5 stars, saying, "By the end of the adventure, even the initially befuddling double-frame story pays off, in spades. For me, this is the first movie of its kind in a very long time that I'd willingly sit through a second or even third time". Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" rated the film 2.5 out of 4 stars, commenting that the movie "is intended to foster a franchise and will probably succeed. Does "John Carter" get the job done for the weekend action audience? Yes, I suppose it does". Dan Jolin of "Empire" gave the film 3 stars out of 5, noting, "Stanton has built a fantastic world, but the action is unmemorable. Still, just about every sci-fi/fantasy/superhero adventure you ever loved is in here somewhere". Joe Neumaier of the New York "Daily News" gave the film 3 out of 5 stars, calling the film "undeniably silly, sprawling and easy to make fun of, [but] also playful, genuinely epic and absolutely comfortable being what it is. In this genre, those are virtues as rare as a cave of gold".


title: John Carter (film)

text: Conversely, Peter Debruge of "Variety" gave a negative review, saying, "To watch "John Carter" is to wonder where in this jumbled space opera one might find the intuitive sense of wonderment and awe Stanton brought to "Finding Nemo" and "WALL-E"". Owen Glieberman of "Entertainment Weekly" gave the film a D rating, feeling, "Nothing in "John Carter" really works, since everything in the movie has been done so many times before, and so much better". Christy Lemire of "The Boston Globe" wrote that, "Except for a strong cast, a few striking visuals and some unexpected flashes of humor, "John Carter" is just a dreary, convoluted trudge – a soulless sprawl of computer-generated blippery converted to 3-D". Michael Philips of the "Chicago Tribune" rated the film 2 out of 4 stars, saying the film "isn't much – or rather, it's too much and not enough in weird, clumpy combinations – but it is a curious sort of blur". Andrew O'Herir of Salon.com called it "a profoundly flawed film, and arguably a terrible one on various levels. But if you're willing to suspend not just disbelief but also all considerations of logic and intelligence and narrative coherence, it's also a rip-roaring, fun adventure, fatefully balanced between high camp and boyish seriousness at almost every second". Mick LaSalle of "San Francisco Chronicle" rated the film 1 star out of 4, noting, ""John Carter" is a movie designed to be long, epic and in 3-D, but that's as far as the design goes. It's designed to be a product, and it's a flimsy one".


title: John Carter (film)

text: A.O. Scott of "The New York Times" said, ""John Carter" tries to evoke, to reanimate, a fondly recalled universe of B-movies, pulp novels and boys' adventure magazines. But it pursues this modest goal according to blockbuster logic, which buries the easy, scrappy pleasures of the old stuff in expensive excess. A bad movie should not look this good".


title: John Carter (film)

text: In the UK, the film was panned by Peter Bradshaw in "The Guardian", gaining only 1 star out of 5 and described as a "giant, suffocating doughy feast of boredom". The film garnered 2 out of 5 stars in "The Daily Telegraph", described as "a technical marvel, but is also armrest-clawingly hammy and painfully dated". BBC film critic Mark Kermode expressed his displeasure with the film commenting, "The story telling is incomprehensible, the characterisation is ludicrous, the story is two and a quarter hours long and it's a boring, boring, boring two and a quarter hours long".


title: John Carter (film)

text: The film's failure led to the resignation of Rich Ross, the head of Walt Disney Studios, even though Ross had arrived there from his earlier success at the Disney Channel with "John Carter" already in development. Ross theoretically could have stopped production on "John Carter" as he did with a planned remake of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", or minimized the budget as he did to "The Lone Ranger" starring Johnny Depp. Instead, Stanton was given the production budget requested for "John Carter", backed with an estimated $100 million marketing campaign that is typical for a tentpole movie but without significant merchandising or other ancillary tie-ins. It was reported that Ross later sought to blame Pixar for "John Carter", which prompted key Pixar executives to turn against Ross, who already had alienated many within the studio.


title: John Carter (film)

text: In September 2014, studio president Alan Bergman was asked at a conference if Disney had been able to partially recoup its losses on "The Lone Ranger" and "John Carter" through subsequent release windows or other monetization methods, and he responded: "I'm going to answer that question honestly and tell you no, it didn't get that much better. We did lose that much money on those movies."


title: John Carter (film)

text: Double Negative, the British visual effects house now known as DNEG, also saw its business adversely affected by the film's failure. According to its later head, Robyn Luckham, who worked extensively on "John Carter", the goal of working on the film was to develop expertise in animating creatures, something they believed would be in demand in the near future. "[E]veryone got cold feet", he recalls. "We didn't have another big show like that for a long time. It was tough."


title: John Carter (film)

text: The night after the premiere, Lynn Collins says she was at another event to promote the movie, when her manager at the time told her "you're just going to have to disappear for a while" due to the mounting perception of the film's failure. She felt it was sexist that as the film's female lead she should suffer for its failure while Kitsch went on to make "Battleship", another big-budget science fiction film that failed at the box office when it was released two months after "John Carter". "I took a break and tried to figure out, up until then my career and my work, I really allowed it to define me", she later said. A year later she fired not just her manager but her entire representation.


title: John Carter (film)

text: After the premiere, Stanton went back to New York City, where as he later told the "LA Times" he spent the next three weeks riding the subway, working on other scripts and reconnecting with his daughter and friends. "I had to go into true 'Lost Weekend' to just purge myself" of empty nest syndrome, he said later. He returned to Pixar, where his many longtime coworkers felt badly for him; Iger had called him shortly after the premiere, quoting from Theodore Roosevelt's "Citizenship in a Republic" speech. "It was the best thing anybody could say at that moment and especially him", Stanton recalled. "It just made me all the more loyal to him after that, whatever they needed help with."


title: John Carter (film)

text: Prior to the film's release, the filmmakers reported that "John Carter" was intended to be the first film of a trilogy. Producers Jim Morris and Lindsey Collins began work on a sequel based on Burroughs' second novel, "The Gods of Mars". However, the film's poor box office performance put plans for sequels into question.


title: John Carter (film)

text: In June 2012 co-writer Mark Andrews said in an interview that he, Stanton, and Chabon were still interested in doing sequels: "As soon as somebody from Disney says, 'We want "John Carter 2", we'd be right there." Despite criticism and Disney's financial disappointment with the film, lead actors Taylor Kitsch and Willem Dafoe all showed strong support, with Kitsch stating "I would do "John Carter" again tomorrow. I'm very proud of "John Carter"."


title: John Carter (film)

text: In September 2012, Stanton announced that his next directorial effort would be Pixar's "Finding Dory", and that the plan to film a "John Carter" sequel had been cancelled. Kitsch later stated he would not make another "John Carter" film unless Stanton returns as director. In a May 2014 interview, he added, "I still talk to Lynn Collins almost daily. Those relationships that were born won't be broken by people we never met. I miss the family. I miss Andrew Stanton. I know the second script was awesome. We had to plant a grounding, so we could really take off in the second one. The second one was even more emotionally taxing, which was awesome." Stanton tweeted both titles and logos for the sequels that would have been made with the titles being "Gods of Mars" and "Warlord of Mars".


title: John Carter (film)

text: In October 2014, Disney allowed the film rights to the "Barsoom" novels to revert to the Burroughs estate. In November 2016, Stanton stated, "I will always mourn the fact that I didn't get to make the other two films I planned for that series."


title: John Carter (film)

text: In 2022, on the film's 10th anniversary, Stanton shared with "TheWrap" how the sequel, "Gods of Mars", would have begun ... with Collins reading the prologue narration as Dejah and, over a relevant montage, recounting the events of the first film. When she appeared diegetically, she would be shown telling it to an infant, Carthoris, her child by Carter. Tardos would then have come into the scene, telling Dejah to go to bed herself and he would put his grandchild to bed. When she left, Tardos would have been revealed to actually be Matai Shang, having shapeshifted to appear to be Tardos, and then after Shang kidnapping the child the opening credits would have begun.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Following the credits, Stanton said, Carter would be seen in his funeral suit lying in the middle of the desert, and waking up. He would take off his jacket and start walking, as a thoat driven by a Thark slowly came in from the horizon. The driver would tell Carter he knew who he was and someone was looking for him. He would take Carter to Kantos Kan, who had been searching for Carter for a long time and was shocked to actually find him. Kan would explain to Carter "you have to get back to heal him".


title: John Carter (film)

text: The audience, expecting a reunion, would then learn that some time had elapsed since the prologue. In the interim, Dejah would have disappeared as well, exploring the River Iss in hopes of finding Carter. Eventually it would have been revealed that the Therns took their child, which would have, as in the second of Burroughs' books and "Beneath the Planet of the Apes", led to revelations that a technologically advanced race living beneath the surface was controlling the air and water supply to keep the planet alive. He implied he had written more, but that was much as he was willing to reveal at that time.


title: John Carter (film)

text: The film's two leads remain proud of the work they did and believe the film is better than its reputation. Kitsch, who has largely returned to television work following his two big-budget failures in 2012, told "The Hollywood Reporter" when "21 Bridges" was released in 2019 that "I learned a ton on that movie. I honestly don't see it as a failure." He noted that fans in Europe still stopped him on the street and mentioned the movie, which he believed had also seen an uptick in viewership due to its recent availability on Netflix.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Collins says it took some time for her to come to terms with the film and its effect on her career. Eventually, "[p]eople started reaching out to me and expressing to me how much the movie changed their life, how much the character inspired them and motivated them ... It's posterity forever. I will die, and people will still be seeing this movie." She came to realize that "a movie that is that polarizing is good no matter what, because that's what art is supposed to do."


title: John Carter (film)

text: On the 10th anniversary of the film's release, "The Hollywood Reporter"s Richard Newby considered its longterm impact, observing that it "changed the film landscape, just not in the way anyone intended it to ... [It] was the moment Disney became the servant of sure bets, and Hollywood realized star power was truly gone. That was when we entered the age of name recognition, where familiar characters and concepts—Jedi, superheroes—became worth more than any actor's name."


title: John Carter (film)

text: Newby also argued that the film was better than its reputation. "What makes the box office failure so frustrating is that I don't believe this to be a case where anything could have been done differently", he wrote. "With the filmmaker, cast and technology at hand, "John Carter" was the best adaptation of "A Princess of Mars" that could have been made and seems will ever be made." He believed the film had actually improved on the book, giving its characters more depth and complexity.


title: John Carter (film)

text: In a lengthy history of the film and an analysis of what contributed to its perceived failure on its 10th anniversary, "TheWrap"s Drew Taylor noted that for all the other discussions of what went wrong with "John Carter",


title: John Carter (film)

text: Three months later, "/Film"s Sandy Schaefer, after admitting that the film was "not without its faults", found "John Carter" was visually accomplished, "combin[ing] the gravelly textures of a Western with the striking aesthetic of a pulp sci-fi epic." Stanton had made better use of the film's budget than other directors of more recent tentpole films. Ironically, Schaefer concluded, "[a]fter a decade of superhero movies and "Star Wars" films, "John Carter"—itself adapted from source material that directly inspired so many of those things—comes across as more refreshing and less derivative now than when it was first released."<ref name="/Film anniversary story"></ref>


title: John Carter (film)

text: Conversely, the passage of time had not helped the film for "Gizmodo"s Germain Lussier, who wrote, "I remember not hating the movie, but not particularly liking it either, and in the decade since release I've always wondered if "John Carter" had cult potential". Upon watching it again, he concluded it did not. "Ten years hasn't changed "John Carter" at all. It's still not an awful movie. There are a few really excellent things in there. But it's mostly just drawn out, uninteresting, and boring, in large part [due] to the whole thing feeling so derivative", since by 2012 aspects of the story that had been original to Burroughs's work had been reused in so many other works.


title: John Carter (film)

text: Lussier also felt the "oceans of exposition between warring factions that are barely distinguishable" came at the expense of the movie's more successful action sequences, and apart from Dafoe and Morton he felt most of the Thark characters had little depth. ""John Carter" works, but it doesn't work well," Lussier concluded. "[T]his viewing made me realize that I doubt even 50 years will change how it feels."


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: Halloween is a 2018 American slasher film directed by David Gordon Green and co-written by Green, Jeff Fradley and Danny McBride. It is the eleventh installment in the "Halloween" film series and a sequel to the 1978 film of the same name, while disregarding all previous sequels. The film stars Jamie Lee Curtis who reprises her role as Laurie Strode. James Jude Courtney portrays Michael Myers, with Nick Castle returning to the role for a cameo. "Halloween" also stars Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, Haluk Bilginer, and Virginia Gardner. Its plot follows a post-traumatic Laurie Strode who prepares to face Michael Myers in a final showdown on Halloween night, forty years after she survived his killing spree.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: After the release of Rob Zombie's "Halloween II", the 2009 sequel to the 2007 remake of the original, two consecutive follow-ups went into development from former rights holder Dimension Films, respectively, but neither came to fruition. As a result, the studio lost the rights to the intellectual property, which were later obtained by Blumhouse Productions with John Carpenter's involvement. Carpenter, who disagreed with the remake's portrayal of lead killer Michael Myers, planned on helping the studio to make the next "Halloween" film into what he believed to be more terrifying than the preceding sequels. Filmmakers David Gordon Green and Danny McBride, who were already fans, proposed their vision to Blumhouse and Carpenter. It was accepted and developed into a sequel to the original.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: "Halloween" was filmed from January to February 2018 in Charleston, South Carolina, before reshoots took place that June. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2018. It was theatrically released in North America on October 19, 2018, by Universal Pictures. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, with many considering it to be the best "Halloween" sequel and a return to form for the series, receiving particular praise for Curtis' performance, Green's direction, and the kills. It grossed over $255 million worldwide and is the highest-grossing slasher film in unadjusted dollars, breaking a record that "Scream" had previously set in 1996 as well as setting several other box-office records. Two sequels have been released: "Halloween Kills" (2021) and "Halloween Ends" (2022).


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: On October 29, 2018, infamous serial-killer Michael Myers, who has been institutionalized at Smith's Grove Psychiatric Hospital for 40 years following his killing spree in Haddonfield, is being prepared for transfer to a maximum-security prison. True crime podcasters Aaron Korey and Dana Haines visit the hospital and, during their encounter, Aaron displays the mask that Michael wore in 1978 to him, to no effect.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: In Haddonfield, Laurie Strode, the only survivor of Michael's killing spree, still lives in fear of him and now drinks heavily and rarely leaves her heavily fortified house. She has a strained relationship with her daughter Karen, whom the state took away from her when Karen was 12. Allyson, Laurie's granddaughter, does try to maintain a relationship with her grandmother. The night of October 30, as Michael is being transferred, the bus crashes and patients begin to wander into the road. The accident causes a father and son to stop to see what is going on. Michael murders them both, takes their truck, and returns to Haddonfield.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: On the morning of October 31, Michael sees Aaron and Dana visiting his sister Judith's grave. He follows them to a gas station where he kills them both, as well as a mechanic for his coveralls, before recovering his mask from Aaron's car. Deputy Frank Hawkins, who arrested Michael in 1978, tries to convince Sheriff Barker that Michael is dangerous after learning that he has escaped. Laurie also learns of Michael's escape and attempts to warn Karen, but Karen dismisses her concerns, urging Laurie to move on with her life.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: Later that night, Allyson finds her boyfriend, Cameron, cheating on her at a costume party and leaves with his friend Oscar. Meanwhile, while babysitting a boy named Julian, Allyson's best friend Vicky and her boyfriend Dave are killed by Michael. Deputy Hawkins and Laurie overhear the incident on the radio and go over to the house. Laurie sees Michael for the first time in 40 years, and shoots him in the shoulder before he flees. The police take Laurie, Karen, and her husband Ray to Laurie's home for protection and a squad car remains outside the residence. Deputy Hawkins promises to find Allyson and bring her to be with the family.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: Dr. Ranbir Sartain, Michael's psychiatrist and former student of Dr. Samuel Loomis, persuades Sheriff Barker to help in the hunt for Michael. Meanwhile, as Allyson and Oscar walk home from the party, Michael kills Oscar, but Hawkins and Sartain arrive just in time to rescue Allyson. Deputy Hawkins then tries to kill Michael, but Dr. Sartainwho has become obsessed with Michael's enigmatic motivationsattacks and leaves Hawkins for dead. It is revealed that he orchestrated Michael's escape to study him "in the wild." Dr. Sartain then heads towards Laurie's home with an unconscious Michael and Allyson locked in the backseat together. Michael wakes up and kills Sartain while Allyson flees from the scene. Michael then ambushes and kills two police officers that are outside Laurie's home.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: When Ray goes outside to greet who he believes are the two officers, Michael strangles him to death. Laurie manages to get Karen to safety before she engages in a showdown with Michael. Laurie severely injures Michael, but he stabs her in the abdomen and pushes her over a balcony. When Michael goes to check Laurie's body, he finds it missing, reminiscent of their first encounter decades ago. Karen pretends to break down in tears and calls out for her mother, luring Michael and allowing her to shoot him in the jaw. Laurie suddenly reappears and attacks Michael, trapping him inside the safe room with Karen and Allyson's help. The trio sets the house ablaze, and Laurie says goodbye to Michael before she begins to faint and lets her daughter and granddaughter quickly hitchhike a passerby vehicle to take her to the hospital. A final shot of the burning basement is shown, with Michael nowhere in sight. In a post-credits scene, Michael's breathing is heard, indicating that he has survived.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: In addition, P. J. Soles, who played Lynda Van Der Klok in the original 1978 film, has an off-screen voice cameo as Allyson's English teacher, Mrs. Van Der Klok.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: After directing the 2007 "Halloween" reboot, Rob Zombie was hesitant to return for "Halloween II" and announced that he would not return to direct another sequel while promoting it in an interview on MTV. Nevertheless, two days after its release, The Weinstein Company announced that a sequel entitled "Halloween 3D" would be released in the summer of 2010. Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer were hired as the film's director and writer and the studio planned for filming to begin in Shreveport, Louisiana, in November 2009. The film was to pick up where the final frame of its 2009 predecessor left off, and would pay homage to the original version of Michael Myers from the 1978 film. It would have involved Laurie Strode being committed to a psychiatric hospital after murdering Dr. Loomis and Sherriff Brackett and Michael tracking her down there one year later. Tyler Mane would have reprised his role as Michael Myers from the first two films and Tom Atkins would have been cast as a psychiatrist, but Scout Taylor-Compton did not plan on returning as Laurie Strode. After disagreements over the budget and concerns that the film was being made too quickly, Bob Weinstein delayed pre-production until after Lussier and Farmer finished their work on "Drive Angry".


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: In June 2011, development resumed with a planned release date of October 26, 2012, but was again delayed when Lussier, Farmer, and Weinstein decided to prioritize an abortive "Hellraiser" reboot. In 2012, "Siren" screenwriters Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski pitched their take on a reboot of the series, simply entitled "Halloween". By 2013, Josh Stolberg was tasked with revising a 2004 draft for "Halloween: Asylum", previously written by "Mirrors 2" scribe Matt Veene. According to Stolberg, the script was a direct continuation of "Halloween: Resurrection", and featured Myers breaking free from death row. In May 2014 development on "Halloween 3D" was revived for one final time with Taylor-Compton agreeing to appear in the film. As a result of the profitability of the "Paranormal Activity" franchise in the 2010s, Weinstein insisted on making "Halloween 3D" a found footage film, and Farmer pitched a mockumentary about a series of murders by a deranged fan taking place during the making of an in-universe film based on Lussier and Farmer's original script. According to Farmer and Taylor-Compton, none of the cast and crew involved liked the concept, and the film was ultimately scrapped.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: In February 2015, Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan were reported as writing a new "Halloween" film, described as a "recalibration" rather than a reboot, which Malek Akkad and Matt Stein were producing. On June 15, 2015, The Weinstein Company was reported to be moving ahead with another "Halloween" sequel, tentatively titled "Halloween Returns", with Dunstan directing. It would have been a standalone film set to reintroduce audiences to Michael Myers years after his initial rampage from "Halloween" and 1981's "Halloween II", as he was confronted by a new generation of victims while on death row. The film would have been set in 1988 and involved Michael Myers escaping his execution from a power surge and going on a rampage in the town of Russellville, Illinois.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: On October 22, 2015, producer Malek Akkad revealed that the production of "Halloween Returns" had been postponed, citing "issues with studios and different variables", and stating that the extra time would result in a better film. Akkad later revealed that he had postponed production because the studio insisted on shooting the film in Serbia, which he believed would be a poor fit for Haddonfield. In December 2015, it was announced that Dimension Films no longer had the filming rights to "Halloween", after "Halloween Returns" failed to go into production on schedule. The film's cancellation was confirmed at the same time. The rights then reverted to Miramax.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: On May 24, 2016, Blumhouse Productions and Miramax were announced to be co-financing a new film, with Universal Pictures distributing through the studio's output deal with Blumhouse. Blumhouse CEO Jason Blum called the original "Halloween" a milestone that had influenced the company to begin making horror films, "The great Malek Akkad and John Carpenter have a special place in the hearts of all genre fans and we are so excited that Miramax brought us together." The rights specifically went to Miramax and Tarik Akkad, who sought out Blum because of his success as a horror film producer. That same month, Mike Flanagan was being courted to direct the film with a set release date for 2017. Flanagan would ultimately pass on the offer and likened his pitch to his own film, "Hush".


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: When John Carpenter, who had co-written the first two "Halloween" films with Debra Hill and directed the original, signed on as an executive producer in 2016, he described his intention: "Thirty-eight years after the original "Halloween", I'm going to help to try to make the 10th sequel the scariest of them all." He discussed his reasoning for revisiting the series for the first time since producing 1982's "" in an interview with Rotten Tomatoes, "I talked about the "Halloweens" for a long time, the sequels — I haven't even seen all of them [...] But finally it occurred to me: Well if I'm just flapping my gums here, why don't I try to make it as good as I can? So, you know, stop throwing rocks from the sidelines and get in there and try to do something positive." When the rights were acquired by Blumhouse, filmmaker Adam Wingard discussed making a new "Halloween" film, but ultimately dropped out after being sated by an email of encouragement from Carpenter, "I kinda walked away from it like, I just got everything I wanted out of this job. 'This is about as good as it gets.'" On February 9, 2017, David Gordon Green and Danny McBride were announced as handling screenwriting duties, with Green directing and Carpenter advising the project. Carpenter said that he was impressed with the pitch presented by the co-writers, solicited by Jason Blum, proclaiming that "They get it." Green and McBride brought along their UNCSA colleague Jeff Fradley to co-write the script alongside them.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: Rather than reboot the series again, they initially chose to focus primarily on continuing the mythology of the first two films when developing the story, with Danny McBride stating, "We all came to the decision that remaking something that already works isn't a good idea. So we just have a reimagining instead." The pitch was created by the writers specifically to present to Carpenter, as they were self-described fans of the original "Halloween". The story was eventually fleshed out so that all of the sequels were ignored from the new film's continuity, and the ending of the first film was retconned in what McBride likened to an alternate reality. However, he later said that the film still pays tribute to the other follow-ups, despite sharing no direct continuity, "you know like there's so many different versions, and the timeline is so mixed up, we just thought it would be easier to go back to the source and continue from there. It was nicer than knowing you're working on "Halloween 11", it just seemed cooler, 'we're making "Halloween 2". For fans, we pay homage and respect to every "Halloween" that has been out there."


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: Despite Green and McBride's comedy roots, "Halloween" was distanced from the comedy genre. McBride further elaborated that "I think there was, like, maybe one joke on the page, but the rest is straight horror." Believing that "good horror movie directors are good directors", Jason Blum hired Green for his perceived "amazing" storytelling. No major steps were taken without Carpenter's approval, including the acceptance of the initial pitch and bringing back actress Jamie Lee Curtis.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: Displeased with Rob Zombie's re-imagining and added backstory of murderer Michael Myers, Carpenter wanted to take the character back to his more mysterious roots, describing him as "a force of nature. He's supposed to be almost supernatural." McBride detailed his approach as humanizing the character, "I think we're just trying to take it back to what was so good about the original. It was just very simple and just achieved that level of horror that wasn't turning Michael Myers into some being that couldn't be killed. I want to be scared by something that I really think could happen. I think it's much more horrifying to be scared by someone standing in the shadows while you're taking the trash out."


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: Early on, the script for the film had Laurie's daughter Jamie Lloyd from the original continuity's "" and "" appear alongside Laurie for the first time. However, subsequent rewrites changed her to 'Karen'. Even before those early plans were publicly known, Danielle Harris, who played Jamie, objected, feeling strongly about Laurie having a daughter that was not Jamie, but her appeals to the production company were dismissed. Another early draft included a reimagining of the original film's ending where Laurie shoots The Shape off the balcony after he murders Loomis. However, Green would ultimately back down from the decision. Altogether, the writing team wrote eighty drafts of the script over the span of eight months, with rewrites taking place up until the last week of filming.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: In September 2017, Jamie Lee Curtis confirmed that she would reprise her role as Laurie Strode. In contrast to the character's final girl role in the original film, Laurie armed herself and prepared extensively in the time period between films in case Michael Myers returned. Although "Halloween II" and its later installments have portrayed Myers as a familicidal killer and Laurie as his sister, the writers felt that the added motive made him less frightening as a killer. As such, they intentionally ignored that aspect of the lore. In the film, Laurie's granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) explains how her life has been impacted by Michael's homicidal rampage 40 years earlier. When a friend hints that he had heard Michael was Laurie's brother, Allyson replies, "No, it was not her brother. That was something people made up." The writers did not originally know if Curtis would be willing to return, according to McBride, so they "busted [their] ass on this script to really make that Laurie Strode character something she wouldn't be able to say no to." On why she returned, Curtis stated, "As soon as I read what David Green and Danny McBride had come up with [...] and the way that they connected the dots of the story, it made so much sense to me that it felt totally appropriate for me to return to Haddonfield, Ill., for another 40th-anniversary retelling. It's the original story in many, many, many ways. Just retold 40 years later with my granddaughter." Curtis had previously returned as Laurie in the sequels "Halloween II" (1981), "" (1998), and "" (2002). The following October, Judy Greer entered negotiations to play Laurie's daughter, Karen Nelson. On December 7, 2017, Andi Matichak was cast to play Laurie's granddaughter Allyson.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: Danielle Harris, who played Jamie Lloyd in the original continuity's "Halloween 4" and "Halloween 5", contacted Blumhouse with the offer to reprise her role in some way, but the studio went with a different daughter character. Harris and certain horror publications expressed their disappointment: "I was okay with it when she had a son [...] but they're saying it's the last one and [...] she has a daughter. And it's not Jamie. It's just kind of a bummer, I guess."


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: On December 20, 2017, it was announced that Nick Castle, who had portrayed Michael Myers in the original film, would reprise his role, with actor and stuntman James Jude Courtney set to portray Myers as well. Courtney was suggested to Malek Akkad and David Gordon Green by stunt coordinator Rawn Hutchinson for his ability to do both physical stunts and genuine acting, auditioning afterwards and receiving a phone call in December 2017 affirming that he had landed the role. Green explained to him his vision for Myers's mannerisms, an amalgamation of Castle's original performance and the addition of an efficient cat-like style of movement. Courtney tailored his portrayal to those specifications from observing an actual cat, "I think cats are the most perfect hunting machines on the planet. And the beauty of it is we don't judge a cat for what a cat does. So I sort of carried that movement and the non-judgmental approach to the way I moved as The Shape, which I learned from my cat Parcival." He referred to collaborating with Castle as an "honor", while Castle described it as a "passing of the torch". Courtney used John Carpenter and Castle's work on the original film to determine how the 40 years that transpired between the events of the films would inform the character over time. The December 2017 announcement of Castle's participation was widely reported as his retaking the role of Myers he originated, with Courtney only doing additional work as the character.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: On January 13, 2018, Virginia Gardner, Miles Robbins, Dylan Arnold, and Drew Scheid were confirmed to play Allyson's friends. On January 16, 2018, Will Patton was publicized to have joined the film's roster. He was later joined by Rob Niter, both actors being announced to portray police officers, as well as British actress Rhian Rees, who was cast as a character named Dana. Speaking of the cast, Castle stated that "What I like about this (new film) is they've got some really good young actors. They fleshed out the relationship of Jamie's character with her daughter and her granddaughter. And they made some choices that I think are really bold choices about who these people are and why they are the way they are now."


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: On July 27, 2018, it was announced that a sound-alike actor would provide a voice-over for Dr. Sam Loomis, who was originally portrayed by Donald Pleasence in the original film, "Halloween II", "" (1988), "" (1989), "" (1995), before his death in 1995. In the film, the voice of Dr. Loomis is heard giving advice that Michael be executed, claiming that Michael needed to be killed because there was no point in keeping evil alive. Loomis is featured in a vocal cameo when Aaron and Dana listen to a recording of Loomis, made three months after the events of the original film. Loomis is voiced by sound-alike stand-up comedian Colin Mahan, who was used to do Donald Pleasence impressions; Mahan was hired after one of the film's executive producers heard him by chance and suggested him for the part. At Carpenter's suggestion, Green, McBride and Fradley initially wrote some drafts where Loomis was more involved in the story, appearing onscreen at the beginning of the film, with the trio devising to cast their art director Sean White as Loomis due to his look-alike resemblance to Pleasence, but the idea went unused. Additionally, P. J. Soles, who had portrayed Lynda van der Klok, Michael's final victim in the original film, was cast in a spoken cameo role as a teacher.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: Principal production was originally set to start in late October 2017. It got delayed until January 13, 2018 and began in Charleston, South Carolina. Michael Simmonds served cinematography duties, with Paul Daley and Stewart Cantrell operating the camera. According to Danny McBride, the horror of the film aims to create a sense of tension and dread to the audience rather than relying on graphic violence; the make-up and visual effects were provided by Christopher Nelson. Jamie Lee Curtis finished her scenes on February 16, 2018, with the remaining principal photography concluding on February 19, 2018. Response to the film's first test screening led the filmmakers to schedule reshoots beginning June 11, 2018. Filming once again took place in Charleston.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: Courtney had a week of rehearsal before filming began. Nelson used a life cast of his face to construct the Michael Myers mask and other prosthetics worn by the actor. The mask was weathered and aged to reflect the character's "authentic evolution" since the original. Courtney was involved in every scene featuring Myers, including those of Nick Castle, who was only involved for a minimal amount of filming, which Castle described to the journalists on set as a cameo appearance: "Jim is our Michael Myers now." Castle reprises his role in one scene with Curtis, playing as the character's reflection in a window and did all of Michael Myers' breathing sounds in post-production. Castle expressed that it was the filmmakers' intention to maintain the atmosphere of the original and that, like the 1978 film, "it's very neighborhood-centric [...] There are a lot of things coinciding (in the new film) that feel like clever ways to introduce a kind of déjà vu of the first one, without feeling like it's being copied. It was the first thing out of their mouths really: 'We want to do it like John [Carpenter] did it.'"


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: Nelson accompanied Courtney throughout filming, providing him with acting advice from his own knowledge of the characters of the "Halloween" films. Nelson had been interviewed and examined for the film by Akkad and Green after a conversation with Blumhouse producer Ryan Turek, who he was already acquainted with. Collaborating with fellow make-up effects artist Vincent Van Dyke, some of his designs and concepts were initially rejected due to legal complications, which were later straightened out as he began his work on the film. Rather than trying to copy the design of the original mask, he intended on recapturing what he described as the visual "feeling" of it. Because the film is set forty years after the events of the original, he studied the decomposition and wrinkling of forty-year-old masks over time while outlining his take on Myers's look, "You're not creating just a mask. You're creating a feeling that you get that does have an expression [...] But also the mask looks completely different in every single angle it's ever been photographed at, and I wanted that feeling too." Courtney was hired after Nelson advised Green not to cast a hulking stuntman in the role in compliance with the first film.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: After previously providing the score for the original "Halloween", "Halloween II", and "Halloween III: Season of the Witch", John Carpenter confirmed in October 2017 that he had made a deal to score the 2018 release. Regarding his take on the sequel, he said, "I'll be consulting with the director to see what he feels. I could create a new score, we could update the old score and amplify it, or we could combine those two things. I'll have to see the movie to see what it requires." The album was released on October 19, 2018.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: "Halloween" had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2018, as part of its Midnight Madness section. It was theatrically released on October 19, a week before the 40th anniversary of the original installment's release.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: Universal claims to have spent an estimated $75.5 million on advertising for "Halloween". The CinemaCon film convention premiered exclusive footage on April 25, 2018, garnering positive reactions from those in attendance. The film had a presentation at the San Diego Comic-Con in Hall H on July 20, 2018, with Jamie Lee Curtis, David Gordon Green, Malek Akkad, and Jason Blum in attendance. During the panel, which featured an extended scene and trailer, Curtis discussed how the film ties in with the MeToo movement, describing it as a film about "trauma", stating, "[Laurie's] taking back her narrative. She has carried the trauma and PTSD of someone who was attacked [...] And there comes a point where you say, I am not a victim. And this is a person who has been waiting 40 years [for the chance]." The first trailer for the film was released on June 8, 2018, followed by a second trailer on September 5, 2018. Trick or Treat Studios obtained the official costume licensing rights for the film. Both Nelson and Vincent Van Dyke joined their design team, who used toolings from the screen-used mold of Michael Myers's mask to adapt it for mass market sale.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: "Halloween" was released digitally on December 28, 2018, and was released on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD on January 15, 2019.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: "Halloween" grossed $159.3 million in the United States and Canada, and $96.3 million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $255.6 million. "Deadline Hollywood" calculated the net profit of the film to be $128.5 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: In the United States and Canada, the film made $7.7 million from Thursday night previews, the fourth-highest ever for an R-rated horror film after "It", "It Chapter Two" and "Paranormal Activity 3". "Halloween" then grossed $33.3 million on its first day (including previews) and went on to debut to $76.2 million, marking the second-best ever opening weekend of October behind "Venom", the biggest debut for Blumhouse, and the highest of the "Halloween" franchise. Its opening performance was also the best-ever for a film starring a lead actress over 55 years old. With its weekend performance alone, the film became the highest-grossing of the franchise. The film dropped 58% in its second weekend but retained the top spot, grossing $32 million. After making $5.5 million on Halloween day (a Wednesday), the film then made $10.8 million in its third weekend, falling to fifth.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: Worldwide, it earned around $100 million, including $12–30 million from 21 markets internationally. It ended up having a global opening weekend of $90.5 million, including $14.3 million from outside the United States. The largest markets were Mexico ($5 million), Australia ($4.8 million), the United Kingdom ($3.6 million) and Russia ($1.8 million). The film made another $25.6 million from international markets in its second weekend, for a running total of $45.6 million.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 79% based on 387 reviews, and an average rating of 6.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""Halloween" largely wipes the slate clean after decades of disappointing sequels, ignoring increasingly elaborate mythology in favor of basic – yet still effective – ingredients." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 67 out of 100, based on 51 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, and those at PostTrak gave the film an overall 75% positive score and a 65% "definite recommend", while the social media monitor RelishMix noted a "positive buzz" response to the film online.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: Peter Debruge of "Variety" felt that the film brings the series back to its roots, calling it "an act of fan service disguised as a horror movie. The fact it works as both means that [director] Green [...] has pulled off what he set out to do, tying up the mythology that Carpenter and company established, while delivering plenty of fresh suspense — and grisly-creative kills — for younger audiences". Writing for "The Verge", Bryan Bishop said the film was "better than almost every other sequel in the franchise" and "a fitting coda to a story that began 40 years ago", while Leah Greenblatt of "Entertainment Weekly" described it as "a faithful, fundamental sequel (and funny too)". In his review for Bloody Disgusting, Joe Lipsett wrote, "All in all, "Halloween" is a worthy entry in the franchise [...] Everything really clicks at the finale, which makes sense considering the film exists to pit Laurie against Michael. And in this capacity, "Halloween" doesn't disappoint". Jonathan Barkan of Dread Central wrote, ""Halloween" pays loving and respectful homage to the 1978 original while making a very bold and decisive claim for its own existence [...] this is quite possibly the scariest Michael Myers has ever been."


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: In a mixed review, Eric Kohn of IndieWire criticized the film's dialogue and staging, but said "Carpenter's own "Halloween" was itself a bumpy ride, made on the cheap, but carried along by the director's firm grasp on his potent themes. The new one works overtime to keep them intact, while communing with the first installment in every possible way — from that famously creepy synth score to the blocky orange credits that bookend the story". "RogerEbert.com"s Brian Tallerico gave "Halloween" two out of four stars, writing it "is admirable in its thematic relation to Carpenter's vision, but the no-nonsense, tightly-directed aspect of the influential classic just isn't a part of this one. Carpenter's movie is so tautly refined that the sometimes incompetent slackness of this one is all the more frustrating. As is the complete lack of atmosphere, another strength of the original". "Forbes" Scott Mendelson thought the film is "not very good or tightly-directed, and it fails as a character play and a scary movie". Christopher Stewardson from "Our Culture Mag" wrote "Raising some interesting questions about indifference to escalating horror, "Halloween" draws Michael Myers in the modern world with consideration and calculated frights."


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: The film was the runner-up for at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2018. The film received four "Fangoria" Chainsaw Award nominations: Best Wide Release, Best Actor (James Jude Courtney / Nick Castle), Best Actress (Jamie Lee Curtis), and Best Makeup FX (Christopher Nelson). The film also received a nomination for Best Horror Film at the Saturn Awards, with Jamie Lee Curtis winning for Best Actress. Rhian Rees, who plays Dana Haines, was nominated for Most Frightened Performance at the 2019 MTV Movie & TV Awards.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: A sequel to this film was released in 2021, titled "Halloween Kills". Its plot focuses on Strode and her family forming a group of attentive townspeople to fend off Myers. "Halloween Ends" was released on October 14, 2022.


title: Halloween (2018 film)

text: Movies such as "Candyman" (2021), "Scream" (2022) and "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (2022) are frequently cited as taking inspiration of the film's approach to rebooting a horror franchise. These films, known as "requels" or "legacy sequels", feature common tropes such as returning cast members, borrowing the title from the original film in their respective series and sometimes ignoring some or all previous sequels to the original.


title: Noah's Ark

text: Noah's Ark (; Biblical Hebrew: "Tevat Noaḥ") is the vessel in the Genesis flood narrative through which God spares Noah, his family, and examples of all the world's animals from a global deluge. The story in Genesis is repeated, with variations, in the Quran, where the Ark appears as "Safinat Nūḥ" ( "Noah's ship") and "al-fulk" (Arabic: الفُلْك).


title: Noah's Ark

text: Various writers of antiquity have mentioned the existence of Noah’s Ark in the 1st and 4th century. Searches for Noah's Ark have been made from at least the time of Eusebius (c. 275–339 CE), and believers in the Ark continue to search for it in modern times, but no confirmable physical proof of the Ark has ever been found. No scientific evidence has been found that Noah's Ark existed as it is described in the Bible. More significantly, there is also no evidence of a global flood, and most scientists agree that such a ship and natural disaster would both be impossible. Some researchers believe that a real (though localized) flood event in the Middle East could potentially have inspired the oral and later written narratives; a Persian Gulf flood, or a Black Sea Deluge 7,500 years ago has been proposed as such a historical candidate.


title: Noah's Ark

text: The structure of the Ark (and the chronology of the flood) is homologous with the Jewish Temple and with Temple worship. Accordingly, Noah's instructions are given to him by God (Genesis 6:14–16): the ark is to be 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high (approximately ). These dimensions are based on a numerological preoccupation with the number 60, the same number characterizing the vessel of the Babylonian flood hero.


title: Noah's Ark

text: Its three internal divisions reflect the three-part universe imagined by the ancient Israelites: heaven, the earth, and the underworld. Each deck is the same height as the Temple in Jerusalem, itself a microcosmic model of the universe, and each is three times the area of the court of the tabernacle, leading to the suggestion that the author saw both Ark and tabernacle as serving for the preservation of human life. It has a door in the side, and a "tsohar", which may be either a roof or a skylight. It is to be made of gopher wood, a word which appears nowhere else in the Bible – and divided into "qinnim", a word which always refers to birds' nests elsewhere in the Bible, leading some scholars to emend this to "qanim", reeds. The finished vessel is to be smeared with "koper", meaning pitch or bitumen; in Hebrew the two words are closely related, "kaparta" ("smeared") ... "bakopper".


title: Noah's Ark

text: For well over a century, scholars have recognized that the Bible's story of Noah's Ark is based on older Mesopotamian models. Because all these flood stories deal with events that allegedly happened at the dawn of history, they give the impression that the myths themselves must come from very primitive origins, but the myth of the global flood that destroys all life only begins to appear in the Old Babylonian period (20th–16th centuries BCE). The reasons for this emergence of the typical Mesopotamian flood myth may have been bound up with the specific circumstances of the end of the Third Dynasty of Ur around 2004 BCE and the restoration of order by the First Dynasty of Isin.


title: Noah's Ark

text: Nine versions of the Mesopotamian flood story are known, each more or less adapted from an earlier version. In the oldest version, inscribed in the Sumerian city of Nippur around 1600 BCE, the hero is King Ziusudra. This story, the Sumerian flood myth, probably derives from an earlier version. The Ziusudra version tells how he builds a boat and rescues life when the gods decide to destroy it. This basic plot is common in several subsequent flood stories and heroes, including Noah. Ziusudra's Sumerian name means "He of long life." In Babylonian versions, his name is Atrahasis, but the meaning is the same. In the Atrahasis version, the flood is a river flood.


title: Noah's Ark

text: The version closest to the biblical story of Noah, as well as its most likely source, is that of Utnapishtim in the "Epic of Gilgamesh". A complete text of Utnapishtim's story is a clay tablet dating from the seventh century BCE, but fragments of the story have been found from as far back as the 19th-century BCE. The last known version of the Mesopotamian flood story was written in Greek in the third century BCE by a Babylonian priest named Berossus. From the fragments that survive, it seems little changed from the versions of 2,000 years before.


title: Noah's Ark

text: The parallels between Noah's Ark and the arks of Babylonian flood heroes Atrahasis and Utnapishtim have often been noted. Atrahasis' Ark was circular, resembling an enormous "quffa", with one or two decks. Utnapishtim's ark was a cube with six decks of seven compartments, each divided into nine subcompartments (63 subcompartments per deck, 378 total). Noah's Ark was rectangular with three decks. A progression is believed to exist from a circular to a cubic or square to rectangular. The most striking similarity is the near-identical deck areas of the three arks: 14,400 cubits, 14,400 cubits, and 15,000 cubits for Atrahasis, Utnapishtim, and Noah, only 4% different. Professor Finkel concluded, "the iconic story of the Flood, Noah, and the Ark as we know it today certainly originated in the landscape of ancient Mesopotamia, modern Iraq."


title: Noah's Ark

text: Linguistic parallels between Noah's and Atrahasis' arks have also been noted. The word used for "pitch" (sealing tar or resin) in Genesis is not the normal Hebrew word, but is closely related to the word used in the Babylonian story. Likewise, the Hebrew word for "ark" ("tevah") is nearly identical to the Babylonian word for an oblong boat ("ṭubbû"), especially given that "v" and "b" are the same letter in Hebrew: bet (ב).


title: Noah's Ark

text: However, the causes for God or the gods sending the flood differ in the various stories. In the Hebrew myth, the flood inflicts God's judgment on wicked humanity. The Babylonian "Epic of Gilgamesh" gives no reasons, and the flood appears the result of divine caprice. In the Babylonian Atrahasis version, the flood is sent to reduce human overpopulation, and after the flood, other measures were introduced to limit humanity.


title: Noah's Ark

text: A consensus among scholars indicates that the Torah (the first five books of the Bible, beginning with Genesis) was the product of a long and complicated process that was not completed until after the Babylonian exile. Since the 18th century, the flood narrative has been analysed as a paradigm example of the combination of two different versions of a story into a single text, with one marker for the different versions being a consistent preference for different names "Elohim" and "Yahweh" to denote God.


title: Noah's Ark

text: The Genesis flood narrative closely parallels the story of the creation: a cycle of creation, un-creation, and re-creation, in which the Ark plays a pivotal role. The universe as conceived by the ancient Hebrews comprised a flat, disk-shaped Earth with the heavens above and Sheol, the underworld of the dead, below. These three were surrounded by a watery "ocean" of chaos, protected by the firmament, a transparent but solid dome resting on the mountains that ringed the earth. Noah's three-deck Ark represents this three-level Hebrew cosmos in miniature: heavens, earth, and waters beneath. In Genesis 1, God created the three-level world as a space in the midst of the waters for humanity; in Genesis 6–8, God refloods that space, saving only Noah, his family, and the animals in the Ark.


title: Noah's Ark

text: The Talmudic tractates Sanhedrin, Avodah Zarah, and Zevahim relate that, while Noah was building the Ark, he attempted to warn his neighbors of the coming deluge, but was ignored or mocked. God placed lions and other ferocious animals to protect Noah and his family from the wicked who tried to keep them from the Ark. According to one Midrash, it was God, or the angels, who gathered the animals and their food to the Ark. As no need existed to distinguish between clean and unclean animals before this time, the clean animals made themselves known by kneeling before Noah as they entered the Ark. A differing opinion is that the Ark itself distinguished clean animals from unclean, admitting seven pairs each of the former and one pair each of the latter.


title: Noah's Ark

text: According to Sanhedrin 108b, Noah was engaged both day and night in feeding and caring for the animals, and did not sleep for the entire year aboard the Ark. The animals were the best of their kind and behaved with utmost goodness. They did not procreate, so the number of creatures that disembarked was exactly equal to the number that embarked. The raven created problems, refusing to leave the Ark when Noah sent it forth, and accusing the patriarch of wishing to destroy its race, but as the commentators pointed out, God wished to save the raven, for its descendants were destined to feed the prophet Elijah.


title: Noah's Ark

text: According to one tradition, refuse was stored on the lowest of the Ark's three decks, humans and clean beasts on the second, and the unclean animals and birds on the top; a differing interpretation described the refuse as being stored on the topmost deck, from where it was shoveled into the sea through a trapdoor. Precious stones, as bright as the noon sun, provided light, and God ensured the food remained fresh. In an unorthodox interpretation, the 12th-century Jewish commentator Abraham ibn Ezra interpreted the ark as a vessel that remained under water for 40 days, after which it floated to the surface.


title: Noah's Ark

text: The First Epistle of Peter (composed around the end of the first century AD) compared Noah's salvation through water to Christian salvation through baptism. St. Hippolytus of Rome (died 235) sought to demonstrate that "the Ark was a symbol of the Christ who was expected", stating that the vessel had its door on the east side—the direction from which Christ would appear at the Second Coming—and that the bones of Adam were brought aboard, together with gold, frankincense, and myrrh (the symbols of the Nativity of Christ). Hippolytus furthermore stated that the Ark floated to and fro in the four directions on the waters, making the sign of the cross, before eventually landing on Mount Kardu "in the east, in the land of the sons of Raban, and the Orientals call it Mount Godash; the Armenians call it Ararat". On a more practical plane, Hippolytus explained that the lowest of the three decks was for wild beasts, the middle for birds and domestic animals, and the top for humans. He says male animals were separated from females by sharp stakes to prevent breeding.


title: Noah's Ark

text: The early Church Father and theologian Origen ("circa" 182–251), in response to a critic who doubted that the Ark could contain all the animals in the world, argued that Moses, the traditional author of the book of Genesis, had been brought up in Egypt and would therefore have used the larger Egyptian cubit. He also fixed the shape of the Ark as a truncated pyramid, square at its base, and tapering to a square peak one cubit on a side; only in the 12th century did it come to be thought of as a rectangular box with a sloping roof.


title: Noah's Ark

text: Early Christian artists depicted Noah standing in a small box on the waves, symbolizing God saving the Christian Church in its turbulent early years. St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), in his work "City of God", demonstrated that the dimensions of the Ark corresponded to the dimensions of the human body, which according to Christian doctrine is the body of Christ and in turn the body of the Church. St. Jerome ("circa" 347–420) identified the raven, which was sent forth and did not return, as the "foul bird of wickedness" expelled by baptism; more enduringly, the dove and olive branch came to symbolize the Holy Spirit and the hope of salvation and eventually, peace. The olive branch remains a secular and religious symbol of peace today.


title: Noah's Ark

text: According to the Hypostasis of the Archons, a 3rd century Gnostic writing, Noah is chosen to be spared by the evil Archons when they try to destroy the other inhabitants of the Earth with the great flood. He is told to create the ark then board it at a location called Mount Sir, but when his wife Norea wants to board it as well, Noah attempts to not let her. So she decides to use her divine power to blow upon the ark and set it ablaze, therefore Noah is forced to rebuild it.


title: Noah's Ark

text: In contrast to the Jewish tradition, which uses a term that can be translated as a "box" or "chest" to describe the Ark, surah 29:15 of the Quran refers to it as a , an ordinary ship, and surah 54:13 describes the Ark as "a thing of boards and nails". Abd Allah ibn Abbas, a contemporary of Muhammad, wrote that Noah was in doubt as to what shape to make the Ark and that Allah revealed to him that it was to be shaped like a bird's belly and fashioned of teak wood.


title: Noah's Ark

text: Abdallah ibn 'Umar al-Baidawi, writing in the 13th century, explains that in the first of its three levels, wild and domesticated animals were lodged, in the second human beings, and the third birds. On every plank was the name of a prophet. Three missing planks, symbolizing three prophets, were brought from Egypt by Og, son of Anak, the only one of the giants permitted to survive the flood. The body of Adam was carried in the middle to divide the men from the women. Surah 11:41 says: "And he said, 'Ride ye in it; in the Name of Allah it moves and stays!'"; this was taken to mean that Noah said, "In the Name of Allah!" when he wished the Ark to move, and the same when he wished it to stand still.


title: Noah's Ark

text: The medieval scholar Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn Masudi (died 956) wrote that Allah commanded the Earth to absorb the water, and certain portions which were slow in obeying received salt water in punishment and so became dry and arid. The water which was not absorbed formed the seas, so that the waters of the flood still exist. Masudi says the ark began its voyage at Kufa in central Iraq and sailed to Mecca, circling the Kaaba before finally traveling to Mount Judi, which surah 11:44 gives as its final resting place. This mountain is identified by tradition with a hill near the town of Jazirat ibn Umar on the east bank of the Tigris in the province of Mosul in northern Iraq, and Masudi says that the spot could be seen in his time.