Zemeckis Bombs with “Mars Needs Moms”

Robert Zemeckis’s animation career climaxed in a spectacular crash and burn with last weekend’s release of the Simon Wells-directed Mars Needs Moms. The $150 million folly debuted in fifth place, grossing $6.9 million, made even more pathetic by the fact that it debuted in 2,440 3-D theaters including a substantial 200-plus IMAX screens. Disney shuttered Zemeckis’s creepy nightmare factory known as Imagemovers Digital over a year ago, and the performance of this film, which Nikki Finke called “one of the biggest money losers of all time,” should finally convince the rest of Hollywood that Zemeckis is absolutely clueless when it comes to producing and directing animation.

Some more disastrous notes about the film’s opening courtesy of Box Office Mojo:

[It] was the third least-attended launch for a Disney animated movie on record (only Ponyo and Teacher’s Pet were less popular) and lowest debut yet for a broadly-released modern 3D-animated movie, replacing Alpha and Omega for the dishonor. Sci-fi animation can be a tough sell, yet Mars still had one of the sub-genre’s weakest launches ever, selling fewer tickets than even Planet 51, Space Chimps and Astro Boy. Mars was severely limited by its premise, which was better suited to a television cartoon, and its execution looked awkward, incoherent and creepy in the marketing.

Rango dropped to second place in its second weekend with a solid $22.6 million and a cume of $68.2 million. Gnomeo and Juliet grabbed $3.6 million in its fifth frame pushing its tally to $89.1 million. The Illusionist wrapped up $72,200 from 76 theaters for a twelve-week gross of $1.975 million. My Dog Tulip grossed $5,251 from 4 theaters for a total of $223,694, and The Trouble with Terkel grossed $568 from one theater for a total of $30,610.