Disney’s Worst Movie Is A Historic Failure That Changed Sci-Fi Forever

By Jonathan Klotz
| Published 8 seconds ago

Sci-fi movies have a history of bombing so bad at the box office that they take down entire studios. It makes sense given the average budget is hundreds of time higher than a horror film, and even two to three times more than a slow burn drama. The risk for sci-fi is high but Disney decided that Robert Zemeckis, the mastermind behind Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump, and Castaway was worth the gamble. What they received in 2011, was Mars Needs Moms, an overstuffed animated feature that is still in contention for the biggest box office bomb in history. Instead of taking down Disney, it scared Disney away from exploring new IP and put a freeze on original sci-fi from the House of Mouse. 

Mars Needs Moms Is A Historic Disaster

Mars Needs Moms imagines a universe where subterranean Martians abduct Earth moms to suck out their “mother-ness” to power their automated nanny-bots raising the next generation of Martians. The process to do so kills the human, making this immediately one of the darkest animated movies to have Walt Disney Productions attached. Seth Green provided the motion capture for Milo, a 9-year-old boy whose mother (Joan Cusack) is abducted. He launches a rescue mission to the Red Planet, coming across friendly Martians and uncovering the ancient history of the aliens in the process. 

Part of the problem with Mars Needs Moms is that to follow the plot, you need to get past the awkward animation style. Robert Zemeckis took the process used in Beowulf and The Polar Express, involving extensive motion capture combined with CGI animation layered on top. It’s rotoscoping, but taken straight to the uncanny valley. 

Disney Changed Their Approach To Sci-Fi

From the reactions to the very first trailer, Disney executives were bracing themselves for a catastrophic bomb. Mars Needs Moms was one of the first films to be savaged on nascent social media networks. The animation style, combined with the corny plot, turned off adults and most importantly, parents. The end result was a final box office total of $39 million, far short of the $150 million production budget, and that’s without mentioning the marketing. 

By the time it was all said and done, Mars Needs Moms cost Disney $144 million. The immediate impact was felt by John Carter of Mars, which became John Carter, and then the best movie to be considered a box office flop. The then-Disney CEO Bob Iger made the call to “mine the IPs” after the failure, making John Carter the last original sci-fi film from Disney. Everything since has been tied to a franchise, and the fallout was so radioactive, that even other studios have been hesitant to pursue original sci-fi. The Creator was marketed heavily as being an original story, and when that can be used as a selling point, you know the genre’s going through a tough time. 

Robert Zemeckis has had a, well, “mixed” run of movies might be a little generous, but for all its faults, Here was at least creative. Since Mars Needs Moms bombed, few films have come close to matching it, but Eli Roth’s Borderlands in 2024 managed to earn less money ($33 million), and it cost more. Thanks to tax credits and creative accounting, Lionsgate only lost $80 million, putting Disney’s staggering deficit of $144 million ahead of it. If it wasn’t for Mars Needs Moms, we could be on our sixth John Carter film by now.

Mars Needs Moms is currently streaming on Disney+, but before you watch it, ask yourself if that’s really how you want to spend your limited time on Earth.