Soropa Blog

Pixar Animation Studios and the Disney Studios have partnered to bring Edgar Rice Burroughs’ classic adventure stories about John Carter to the big screen in 2012. Originally said to be just one movie, word now has it that Pixar producer Andrew Stanton has been given the green light to work on three movies, probably corresponding roughly to the first three novels in the John Carter saga. Michael Chabon has been hired to finish the screenplay(s) for John Carter. Filming was scheduled to finally get underway this month (November 2009) in Utah, where most if not all location shots are believed to be planned.

Bringing Burroughs’ fantastic vision of Mars to life on the silver screen won’t be an easy task. Burroughs imagined a world populated by dying cities set among ochre moss plains criss-crossed by huge canals. The thin atmosphere is sustained by an “atmosphere plant” that produces new oxygen at almost enough of a pace to replenish the dying world’s air. Water is drawn from a few scarce resources, including a huge underground sea. Perhaps the most challenging part of ERB’s vision is the dynamic ecosystem of Mars, which includes a horde of many-limbed creatures that are as fierce as they are alien to Earth.

ERB fans have long wanted to see the John Carter of Mars stories translated into film. The first attempt at capturing the story on film occurred in the 1940s but ultimately flatlined. Subsequent efforts occurred in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. On every occasion some concept work has been produced but funding never materialized. In some cases the rights were either in dispute or at least an unresolved status. And one must ask how the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs can still license these movies, since A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars, and The Warlord of Mars are all in the public domain.

In fact, The Asylum — an independent film studio — announced earlier this year it would be releasing its own John Carter of Mars movie, titled “A Princess of Mars”, on DvD in December 2009. This low-budget adaptation appears to be less faithful to the books than hard core ERB fans hope the Andrew Stanton movies will be, but even Stanton’s creative team is expected to make some changes to John Carter of Mars. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ depiction of the world his characters named Barsoom was so detailed he even gave it a language, a history stretching back millions of years, and a theory of its own evolution that attempted to explain every creature and phenomenon John Carter and his companions encountered.

Although the Asylum’s movie doesn’t seem to have much merchandising associated with it, it’s almost guaranteed that Disney will generate a boatload of John Carter of Mars merchandise. Licensing for the Disney/Pixar movies could potentially cost manufacturers and retailers up to $1 billion. Collectibles might include Jetan games. Jetan was the Martian Chess game that Burroughs designed for his books. Jetan differed from Earth chess in several ways, including the fact that Jetan boards were 10 squares to a side instead of 8 as on Earth.