Straight from the Edgar Rice Burroughs website:
Tarzana, CA: October 2, 2007
Pre-production for the Disney/Pixar “John Carter of Mars” film is gathering steam.
The Pixar creative team spent Tuesday morning exploring the massive Edgar Rice Burroughs archives in the ERB, Inc. offices on Ventura Blvd. Pixar’s Jim Morris (vp), Andrew Stanton (director), Mark Andrews (script) discussed the “John Carter of Mars” film project with Burroughs representatives, Danton Burroughs, Sandra Galfas and Jim Sullos.
All six members at the meeting expressed a deep commitment to the project, acknowledging that they had been inspired by Burroughs’ creations from a very early age. This is evidenced in the excitement held for the John Carter property and the plans for a film trilogy faithful to the Burroughs books. Projected release date is sometime before 2012.
Danton Burroughs presented the creative team with a wealth of resources, including art samples and books by ERB scholars such as Irwin Porges and John F. Roy. They noted that their major resource to date had been the thousands of official ERB, Inc. Webpages and Webzines.
Created in 1911 in serialized form for ‘All Story,’ John Carter is an immortal pulp adventurer. The only Earth man on Mars, Carter was transported to his strange new home by a mysterious sort of astral projection after dying in a gold mine during the American Civil War. On Mars, he lives a life of adventure fighting strange monstrous aliens to save the life of a fair princess. Series creator Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) produced over 88 novels during his lifetime (24 of which were Tarzan stories).
A popular pulp character, John Carter was adapted by Roy ‘the boy’ Thomas and Gil Kane into a long running Marvel Comics series in the 1970’s. More recently, he appeared in the Alan Moore public domain pulp character-fest ‘League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’ both in ‘Alan and the Sundered Veil’ and the volume two War of the Worlds story.
Formerly optioned by John Favreau (Iron Man) and later Don Murphy (Natural Born Killers, Shoot ‘Em Up), Chud.com has theorized that Disney/Pixar purchased the property simply to sit on it until director Andrew Stanton is ready… which will not be for a while. With films including Up, Toy Story 3, and 1906 already slated for production by Pixar, this would put the John Carter trilogy in the area of 2011.
By that time I figure we may really have issues with life on Mars.
Recommended Reading:
John Carter of Mars – volume 1 – The Princess of Mars & The Gods of Mars
John Carter of Mars – volume 2 – Warlord of Mars & Thuvia, Maid of Mars
John Carter of Mars – volume 3 – Chessmen of Mars & Mastermind of Mars
