One Of Disney's Biggest Flops Completely Ruined The Book It Adapted

For every giant hit owned by Disney, there seems to be a notable bomb. Disney currently owns several movies that count among the 10 highest-grossing of all time, including two "Avatar" movies, two "Avengers" movies, "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," "Spider-Man: No Way Home," "Zootopia 2," and "Inside Out 2." Collectively, those movies have earned over $2.084 trillion.

It's a good thing those films were profitable, though, because Disney also must claim ownership of "John Carter," "The Lone Ranger," "The Marvels," "The 13th Warrior," "Strange World," "Tomorrowland," and, for the purposes of this article, "Mars Needs Moms." Those films collectively lost about $1.247 billion. That may seem like small potatoes when compared to the $2.084 trillion, but I am never going to brush off over a billion dollars in losses. And that's not even adjusted for inflation. 

"Mars Needs Moms" was a particularly strange project for Disney. It was released in 2011 and employed motion-capture animation to capture the bodily movements and facial performances of actors such as Seth Green, Dan Fogler, Elisabeth Harnois, Mindy Sterling, and Joan Cusack. 

It was based on a book by Berkeley Breathed, best known for the "Bloom County" newspaper comics. Breathed's absurdist strips were widely celebrated during their initial heyday (1980 – 1989), and the cartoonist won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for Editorial Cartooning. In 2007, when he had moved to producing only Sunday comics, Breathed also authored the children's picture book "Mars Needs Moms!," another marvelously whimsical and touching story about a boy named Milo who hates his mom. Martians, however, long for mothers of their own. Breathed had a way with words, describing moms as "giant, summer-stealing, child-working, perfumy garden goblins." The book is good. The movie is not. 

In Berkeley Breathed's "Mars Needs Moms!", Milo sees his mom only as a tyrant who enforces rules and punishes him for misbehaving. Martians arrive that night, however, and take her away to Mars. Milo stows away. It seems that Martians are colorful, lumpen beings that sprout from the ground like potatoes. They require moms because they have no one to drive them to soccer practice, ballet classes, and pizza parties. Plus, they have no one to dress them or bandage their boo-boos. At one point, Milo finds himself on the surface of Mars with no helmet, and his mom gives him her own breathing apparatus. Milo comes to realize that his mom loves him, and that's the best part. 

It's a sweet, simple story with fun illustrations and fun language. The "Mars Needs Moms" movie, however, isn't any of those things. Directed by Simon Wells (the great-grandson of H.G. Wells, incidentally), the movie is far more insidious and unnecessarily complex. Martians, observing Earth from afar, decide that human mothers possess all the requisite qualities they need to program their nanny-bots, and arrange a kidnapping mission. Like in the book, Milo (voice of Seth R. Dusky) witnesses his mom (Joan Cusack) being kidnapped on a Martian vessel, and stows away. The Martians, however, are not colorful, lumpen potato beings, but large-eyed, noseless, flat-headed creatures. They are overseen by the Supervisor (Mindy Sterling), who gives off proper villain vibes. 

Milo ends up falling in with another human on Mars, the crude Gribble (Dan Fogler), who had been kidnapped by Martians years earlier. Milo also befriends a friendly Martian named Ki (Elisabeth Harnois) who raises Martian babies. Before long, they'll be toting laser guns and going on rescue missions. 

"Mars Needs Moms" cost $150 million to make, which was large at the time. The filmmakers invented their own alien language. Seth Green provided all of the movement and voice work for Milo, but his voice was considered too adult in post-production, and he was overdubbed by Seth R. Dusky. "Mars Needs Moms" was as ambitious as "Avatar." 

But it wasn't nearly as interesting as "Avatar." The title (derived from the 1968 film "Mars Needs Women") was perhaps too childish for mainstream audiences, and the animation was ... frankly, bad. The facial capture was poor, resulting in characters with inexpressive, waxy faces. Eyeballs looked glassy and wrong. The bodily movements were uncannily realistic, but didn't add any humanity to the movie. All the attempts to turn "Mars Needs Moms" into a visual marvel only made it an ugly eyesore. It was the biggest flop of 2011. 

Breathed commented on the movie on his Patreon, explaining that he sold the rights to his book in 2008 and was unsure what to expect. During production, he received a scary note from a creative exec, asking him if he knew "what they were doing to my book." He wrote: "'Making it even funnier,' I remember thinking/hoping." Breathed says he saw a scene early in production of an animated Seth Green trying to rouse his dead mother, and he wrote that it made him cry. "Surely," he wrote, "they'd nail the necessary comedy/fun/silliness as they did the pathos." 

"Alas," he wrote. He then described the movie as "$300 million series of ill-considered choices," and ended with "C'est la vie."

Berkeley Breathed wouldn't see another one of his works adapted to film again until 2024's "Hitpig!" That film, too, bombed.