John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood: How the sci-fi classic flopped at the box office but continues to inspire fans and filmmakers

It took 100 years to bring Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars to the big screen. It took Disney Studios just ten days to declare the film a flop and lock it away in the Disney vaults. How did this project, despite its quarter-billion dollar budget, the brilliance of director Andrew Stanton, and the creative talents of legendary Pixar Studios, become a calamity of historic proportions?

Michael Sellers, a filmmaker and Hollywood insider himself, saw the disaster approaching and fought...