Cool News
JOHN CARTER OF MARS -- Rights Secured, Work Underway!
Hey folks, Harry here. One of my all time dream projects has been JOHN CARTER OF MARS based on the amazing books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Reading classic pulp fiction from the late teens through the mid-fifties was a benefit of growing up in a Paper Nostalgia shop run by my father. Having copies of the original St. John's editions... the original pulps, paperbacks, Frazetta prints, Marvel Comics, Dell Comics and oh yeah... the Gold Key comics amongst others.... Well I was exposed to it in heap loads.
The closest vintage attempt at JOHN CARTER that I'm aware of was the classic Warner Brothers animator Bob Clampett's almost collaboration with (if memory serves) John Coleman Burroughs in the early to mid-thirties on a developed feature length animated version of JOHN CARTER OF MARS. The tests for this can be found on the BEANIE AND CECIL dvd (a super cool dvd btw) which would have been the first feature length animated film, years before SNOW WHITE, but the investors chickened out and didn't have faith that a feature length animated film could hold the attention of an audience. SIGH!!!! It could very well have changed for all time the direction that the feature animated American film would have gone. Alas, the short sighted rule the Earth!
Then for a short time almost 5-8 years ago, PRINCESS OF MARS was in heavy development at Disney as a live-action Tom Cruise / Julia Roberts project, with a script that frankly... I kinda dug. It wasn't super great, but it was cool as all hell!
Now yesterday I got the drop from multiple sources that Sean Daniel and Jim Jacks, the producers on films like TOMBSTONE and THE MUMMY and THE SCORPION KING and DAZED AND CONFUSED had won the battle for the rights to JOHN CARTER OF MARS!
I wrote Sean Daniel to hear what I could hear, because my sources had told me that they were picking it up for Dwayne Johnson aka THE ROCK to star in. Well, given I've been hearing some encouraging word on THE ROCK in SCORPION KING I was curious to find out more, so I wrote Sean Daniel to see if I could get some news about all this. Here's a bit of what he told me...
" We and
the studio are really excited. We are not casting it yet and so the reports
about buying it for The Rock are untrue. Not saying he's not on the list as
John Carter- we love him and the movie world is about to discover that he's the real deal-but truthfully as always first things first: a great script
based on the first book. (ED. NOTE: PRINCESS OF MARS - 1917)" -- Sean Daniel (THE MUMMY movies, DAZED AND CONFUSED, THE GIFT and many others)
Ok, now the possible good part about Sean Daniel and Jim Jacks getting this property is that they will most likely want to make it period, and given their track record with box office for doing period fantasy adventure... They can probably get it done. Also the film is at Paramount - home of the original RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, which should mean they get period action.
The keys are going to be getting the right man to play John Carter ahemKURT RUSSELLahem or ahemMatthewMcCounagheyahem or ahemRusselCroweahem sorry, something in my throat there... Plus getting a director that loves this sort of fantasy material and can deliver upon it. Obviously their association with Stephen Sommers puts him in the race, and frankly I feel they need to have this have a different look from THE MUMMY movies... It shouldn't just be THE MUMMY on Mars... Frankly, I'd go after folks like Frank Darabont, Robert Rodriguez, Peter Jackson, Steven Spielberg and their type. I throw in Rodriguez and Darabont because they have been looking into this type of film. Darabont with his DOC SAVAGE (WHICH NEEDS TO GET MADE) and Rodriguez, who worships the ground that Ray Harryhausen, Burroughs and Robert E Howard walked on... and this is right there.
With the success of a film like LORD OF THE RINGS, I really feel the smart thing to do is to downplay the cheeky humor that the Jacks/Sommers produced epic fantasy films have had, to play this as a straight adventure film told by exquisite screenwriters and a director with a singular mature vision for the material respecting Burrough's original vision.
Unfortunately, my dream of this having the look and tone of John Ford's THE SEARCHERS is probably too much to ask for. That this movie have majesty and capture the dream of adventure on a far off planet with four armed creatures, where you have superhuman abilities, and where the weaponry is still blade weaponry and holstered guns.
Perhaps they'll get this all right. That they won't rush it, but take the time to nail it the way it should be nailed. Enjoy the pics and the news!
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Apr 12, 2002 1:30:36 AM CDT
the first feature length animated film was not snow white...
by scratcher
it was the adventures of prince achmed by lotte reiniger, 1926. it's an amazing film animated entirely with cutout silhouettes, and available on vhs. you should check it out!
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Carter's only the coolest property ever! Who to play Dejah Thoris? Will Tars Tarkas be CGI? From Burroughs' books to Claremont's comics, John Carter is my childhood hero so this IS cool news. The Rock? I'll see The Scorpion King next week, so I'll get back to you on that...Crowe? Nix. Matt McConaughey. Please no. Cruise? He's got the looks for the part. But there's bound to be someone better, though.
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But I'm tryin to be first anyway, everyone loves cool news.
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I'm a little tired of the way mainstream cinema has totally co-opted our genre pictures. The Scorpion King is a sword and sorcery, muscle-bound warriors going at it, battle-ready action picture. However, there is no blood!!! Sounds like the producers lack guts. Twenty years ago - this thing would have been Rated R. It would have been intense, gory and edgy. Now, The Scorpion King is just another summer flick, sanitized for the viewing public's consumption. In it's wake: a ready-made soundtrack (it's almost like movies exist only to sell CD's), filled with bland, hybrid music lacking any merit; mass-merchandising; cross-promotions. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if the filmmakers worked a cola ad into the flick. Welcome to the age of mass consumerism . . . Fucking, fast food culture. I know the line: studios have to make these movies accessible to the mainstream, they represent huge dollar investments. You know what, that's total crap. The only reason you have to make mass-appeal films is because you need to ring every buck out of the movie at the box office. Of course, the reason for this fact is: each movie costs so much damn money to make. By making smaller, more genre-oriented flicks, a studio can still turn a tidy profit. The reason: you don't need to earn as much cash to make a few coins. Let's see, a film costing $80 million to $100 million needs to see $200 million to be considered a success. Because of this, more and more bland, heartless, pointless and reserved pictures are produced. Does mainstream cinema still have a pulse? Certainly, but it's becoming fainter and fainter. Advertisers, suits, number-crunchers, corporate greed and filmgoer apathy is, quite simply, killing the movies. I'm angry now. But how long until all this overt, de-humanizing commercialism devours my will? I need a hardcore Conan movie to come along and cleanse my soul. Man, I love the movies . . . In fact, I love different kinds of films. I'm just nervous that motion pictures will blend together, lose their distinctiveness and become nothing more than a means to pitch a trend, CD, product or pretty face. Sure, there is always independent, arthouse cinema . . . However, how long until indy moviemaking is conquered by big business concerns? Christ, independent films are needing more and more dinero just to get off the ground. With corporate takeovers and mergers, everything around us is being controlled by fewer companies. Soon, all entertainment decisions will be made by a small, faceless minority. I find that scary. At the rate we're going, true genre picture making (through the work of auteurs and visionaries) will become extinct. So for every Scorpion King-type picture you watch, try to sing the praises, raise the banners and get behind genuine movements and people within filmdom. Fight the good fight, folks. While you still have fight in you. Hollywood will probably screw the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars adaption up. It will simply looks like every other mainstream film haunting the local Google-plex. Really, material like this needs to embrace its pulp roots . . . It needs to have a vibe - either trashy and campy or tough and viscious. I'm very worried that the end result will be a re-hashed retread - just another flavor of the week . . . A commodity and not the thoughtful and honest movie the source material deserves.
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Carter= Hugh jackman
Dejah Thoris= Salma hyak, Zeta jones would have been nice before she dropped the kid.
Tars Tarkus= michael Clark Duncan. With CGI extra arms
Anyone else? -
I remember McTiernan almost directed this back in the late 80's/early 90's. This movie is a fantasy of mine -- too see it brought to the screen that is. Just looking at that Frazetta piece again(one of my all time faves) is enough to inflame my brain like a Freudian napalm attack. Darabont would be awsome... I'm intesrested to see him bring his formal style to full blown sci-fi/fantasy. This COULD be the next Raiders. I wait and hope.
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Justice you're right he would be P-E-R-F-E-C-T. Imagine his deadpan Wolverine-esque reactions to four armed creatures and other wierd shit. I can just see those swirling orange and yellow skies now. Let there be plently of female greased-up skin this too. Mars needs women.
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Truer words were never spoken, my friend. If filmdom is the stew, genre is the spice. Filmdom ain't got no spice these days.
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Are you out of your goddamned mind? McConaughey's not John Carter, he's FLASH GORDON. Big difference. Russel Crowe or Hugh Jackman wouldn't suck as JC. For that matter, neither would the Rock, but in that instance, it would become a totally different picture.
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Is it just me or does that guy in the pic fourth from the bottom bear an uncanny resemblance to Mr Sex In The City?
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Apr 12, 2002 4:35:26 AM CDT
Harry this is all well and good but if there aren't any Were
by regis travolta
I don't really see much of an audience for the thing, especially if that no talent ugly ass The Rockface stars in it. But if there's some really good pussy eating of the Martian Princess by John Carter then maybe just maybe your pussy licking best bud Guillermo del Toro can direct it.
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As I recall from reading various interviews with Clampett, he was trying to make a series of John Carter short subjects, not a feature film. But MGM changed their minds and wanted a Tarzan series instead and that was that.
And he was doing the preliminary work in 1935 and 1936, which means even if he'd done it it probably wouldn't have been completed before Snow White was released in 1937. -
I read all of these when I was eleven, I even liked them, and I dug those airships. But every story was the same - Evil race of bizarre martians turns up led by Grand Vizier, and say "WHERE AM DE WHITE WIMMEN?". They kidnap squeaky but luscious metal bikini clad softbody Dejah Thoris for obvious but unstated purpose, John Carter buckles a few pointless straps across his torso and goes off alone to do battle. Just as he's fought, fast-talked and furtled his way through all kinds of alien princesses, dumb guards dubious stereotypes in just over 100 pages, DJ gets grabbed by the tits AGAIN and dragged off through some secret door / curtain / picture frame / trapdoor, just in time for the next book. John "Rape Is Good" Norman did kind of the same thing, only with some heavy S & M and some really extreme misogyny. Anyway if this gets made, I hope they do an Arwen on Dejah Thoris and give her more to do than just jiggle and pout. Some pole-dancing, for example.
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On Robert Stockton's homepage - http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/ People/rgs/ take out the space before "People". Hey I forgot she was the Princess of Helium.
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He's so wrong for the roll it hurts. Carter is supposed to be agile and bounce around like a tennis ball on Mars. He's also a Virginia gentleman, and the Rock as a just post-Civil War gentleman? Uh, big no. All the others named at least look the part, somewhat built, but still thin.
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They better get someone top-knotch on this and not the fucking Rock!!!!!!!
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I've read all the JC books, all of the Pellucidar series, a good number of the Tarzans and I can say this about ERB's books.
They are rather formulaic and repetetive, but it's a damn GOOD formula.
They almost all are based on a massive adventurous undertaking to find the hero's wife, lover, child or friend who is in the hands of unpleasant people. There's a few close calls almost as extreme as the two groups being on opposite sides of the same tree. But the books are written so well that you can't help but do that "she's right THERE! Turn around you ASSHOLE!" thing that you used to do as a kid at the movies or when you were trying to tell Popeye that NOW, RIGHT now was the perfct time to pull out the spinach.
At the center of every one of these books is a desperate, almost painful love between two characters. They meet, they are separated, and the love is so strong that our hero (literally) will walk across the globe to get back to that person.
That's what I like to call the "central emotional core" of ERB's characters, and of John Carter in particular. His love for Dejah Thoris is so all encompassing that when she is take away (time and time again) he starts walking, keeps walking, getting madder all the way, and god help the guys responsible for the guys who took her when he catches up to them.
If you get the core right, you can fuck up everything else and it'll still be right. Case in point-the emotional core of Judge Dredd can be summed up in two words - Joe Friday. If they had understood that Judged Dredd is basically Joe Friday with a bigger gun and a greater willingness to use it, they could have dressed everyone in boxer shorts and riding horses and the character would have been right. Instead it LOOKED great but they missed the mark on the character. Superman, on the other hand, so perfectly nailed the emotional core that they eventually changed the original comic book to fit the stuff they thought up for the movie.
I can see The Rock getting the angry part right, but if he can't show that level of love, it won't work.
And no, it doesn't have to be a period piece. As long as John Carter is an athletic man of some means (an oil baron who still works the fields, hell, a cattleman or farmer) it could take place today, becasue once you get to mars who cares WHAT year it is. Heck, they could even have a scene of Tars Tarkas' people shooting down the latest mars explorer.
I want this, and I want Hiero's Journey, and I want a discworld movie or two, and...okay, I'm getting greedy. -
OH I Just don't know about this.
First off, there is a lot of skin in these books and a lot of violence. This is adult fantasy. In order to justify the cost, they will have to tone it down, and in the process will probably destroy what is so incredible about these books.
Just last year I wrote to the company that publishes Rice Burroughs` books and stated that it was abusrd that the John Carter books were, at that time, out of print. They wrote me back with a threatening letter and told me they had forwarded their letter to their legal department.
I think these movies should be R with a lower budget. I don't need all that CGI crap. If they pick the right actor, the effects are secondary, and none of the actors Harry mentioned, (ahem Russel Crowe are appropriate choices.
If these movies don't look exactly like Frazetta's beautiful paintings, they shouldn't be made!
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I have been waiting for years for someone to have the imagination to do this. The concepts, scenarios, and sheer density of action are a great mix for the silver screen, forgetting for a moment the obvious challenges the screenwriter will face.
One cover set Harry didn't show was the one I grew up on, the 1979 Michael Whelan (probably because you can walk into a store and find that one today). The art has a huge impact on how you visualize the characters, so the Rock would be a real leap for me personally, totally aside from the whole the Virgina gentleman angle (and the fact that the every description in the books both physical and psycho-social seems to conflict with the same of the Rock ), nonetheless if that's what it takes, I'll be glad to see it made if it otherwise passes muster.
I reread those repetitive books over and over. The poster who complained about the structural simplicity just doesn't get it- not only are the books meant to be consumed like popcorn, but simplicity is a far lesser flaw for a film than for a book.
Meanwhile there's the plus side- the visuals in this film can't help but be stunning, they would have to hire cheap morons for it to be otherwise. The situations in the stories are very Raiders-like. We are constantly coming across ancient lost cities, discovering terrible secrets, running afoul of mad scientists, petty tyrants, not- so petty tyrants, and helpless femine prisoners. Barsoomian buildings apparently were designed by ardent climbers, so if your flier is piloted by a secret agent of the Holy Therns and after a brief scuffle you find yourself flung from the rooftop, not to worry, the lighter gravity will allow you to catch purchase on one of the many conveniently placed ornamentations, and climb back up to catch the rascal unawares!
Captain Kirk would get on famously with John Carter- the only man to violate the prime directive more than him! At the end of most books, the earlier poster neglected to mention, the one member of the enemy nation that befriended JC is set up to be the new ruler after the inevitable "regime change" at the end! Patterns of Force, Return of the Archons, A Taste of Armageddon- shall I go on?
The real challenge is going to be dealing with the dated nature of the material, from social to scientific to cultural, it was, as has been said, a product of it's time. That challenge could be taken as an opportunity to do something really unique, I just fear a watered-down version with all "problems" removed. There is nudity of all major characters yet the mores are Victorian. There is mucho violence e.g. standing on a mountain of slain enemies hewing fatiguedly away as the sun sets. We know Mars alot better now than in 1912-45. Nearly everything in the books we know now to be impossible... address the issue, or avoid it? If the filmakers can make a visually fantastic pic that honors the spirit of the original, that will be a real boost to my faith. A friend of mine said recently, after hearing my pitch of John Carter: "No way, it will never get made." I'd love for him to owe me a drink ;-) -
Killraven is an old comic from Marvel also where he battles the martians from War of the Worlds, well they look like them anyway. Killraven is rumored to be coming back as a comic book soon from Marvel's mature readers line. Killraven would be cool. John Carter could be good if done properly.
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Get a sense of humour... *** Hiero's Journey! Now that's a lost classic!
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Apr 12, 2002 10:21:16 AM CDT
Hugh Jackman, Bruce Campbell or Mark Dacascos would be great as
by monkey_king
Look at most of those Pulp pics and tell me it doesn't look like Bruce Campbell as John Carter.
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Anyone else notice how much this looks like He-Man and Battle Cat? Harry was He-Man influenced by John Carter at all?
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Whats with hollywoods fasination with the Rock? I'll skip this movie if he's Carter!
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Unless I read the books wrong, didn't JC and most of the women walk around naked most of the time!
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Apr 12, 2002 11:04:33 AM CDT
Isnt this the story where the Martians dont have belly-buttons c
by wak15
And didnt the guy have to lock himself in a tomb that could only be opened from the inside? Think so........
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Long time reader of the John Carter series and I have to say that if this does get made I pray that it doesn't follow in the foot steps of "Doc Savage:Man of Bronze". Of course they can't stay completely true to the original book because everybody was nude with just some leather harnesses to carry weapons.
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Has no one else seen this?! fuck the Rock, this isnt supposed to be Conan. Carter is slim, with the 'carriage of a fighting man'. Jackman has proven he can have the ferocity (x-men) and I think he can pull off the romance(which is INTEGRAL to this movie working) Alas, this had been my dream project to direct as a 4-to-6 hour miniseries of the first three books. This better be damn good or expect a remake in ten years or so!!!!!!!!
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Um, the first few books should definitely be in the public domain, rather like The Scarlet Pimpernel and Zorro. Regardless, this could be a lot of fun. ERB couldn't write his way out of a toilet bowl, but the books were a lot of fun in a pulpy way. I'm glad the Disney version wasn't made, though - Julia Roberts is not, was not, and never will be Dejah Thoris. Maybe someone like Halle Berry?
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Well, she's been suggested for every other part that ever comes up for speculation here at AICN, so I thought.....what the heck.
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...as at least it shows some of the HW types breaking out of the standard cinematic fare. However, I want to see Elric of Melnibone brought to the screen more than JC. Now that would be something new. Our hero is a depressed, contemplative, anemic, albino, weakling, sorcerer who makes a pact with a greater demon. I can hear the religious right shrieking already. That and the potential for Cthulhu Mythos cross overs with gods like The Tentacled Chaos Lord of the Deep is intense! Can I get a green light?
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Apr 12, 2002 1:24:01 PM CDT
I think it would be great to do this as an all-CGI movie, like F
by wardog
At least they'd have a great story to start with, and they could do justice to all the CGed Martian characters and creatures better if the whole movie were CGI. ****** Jackman may be a good actor, but he's Australian. Carter is a mid-19th Century Virginian. I'd really rather see an American essay the role. But IF they went with live-action augmented with CG Martian characters and creatures, I think Robert Patrick might work as John Carter. He's not a Hollywood popular pretty-boy, and the MAN CAN ACT!
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Screw Tom Cruise, Russel Crow, yadda yadda. They've all been done to death. I'll tell you who should really play JC. Rufus Sewell. You know, Dark City, Knight's Tale, that guy. He would be perfect. The gravelly voice, take-no-shit attitude, and the fact that he's not a complete pretty boy would fit really well with the "man from Virginia turned hero" vibe. Hey Harry! Get on the horn and use your awesome cosmic geekiness to get this man signed on!
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I had high hopes for this film. I mean just look at the Frazetta artwork! If people with taste handled this film we could get something as great as the first Conan film. Of course Conan is different from John Carter in many ways but I always thought that there are quite a few scenes in John Milius
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Jackman can do accents. Furthermore, it might interest you to know that the Virginia accent has changed in two centuries. In the 1700s, liguistics scholars say that it actually very closely resmebled the modern day Australian accent...I know, I know; John Cater is from the 1800s..my point is that a good actor can do accents...Hugh Jackman has the physical look of Carter, and I believe that he is a pretty good actor from the few performances I have seen. With Russell Crowe priced too high for many action and genre movies, we need someone like Jackman who is a good actor and a star, but whose every choice of roles is not dictated by ego and money. In other words, we need a mid-level star to be a genre hero actor. Jackman is one of the best candidates for this.
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Where you been, soot-head? There's a Tail End goin on! *** John Carter of Mars, huh? Man, I hope it's done kickass, and not too wink-nudge tongue-in-cheek. Stupid camp made Flash Gordon fun with many (MANY) beers, but this'd be a crime. Big difference between serial-nostalgia stuff and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Confession, though, I've never actually read the books. My older brother had em, but wouldn't let me look past the covers--Frazetta is a GOD. Then he took em all with him to college... I wonder if he still has them? Anyway, even not having read any of them (yet!), I say they better not fuck it up, 'cause anything even obliquely associated with the artwork of Frank Frazetta better damn well be taken seriously. Hell, they better snatch him up for the poster art NOW!
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I am almost 100% positive that Tom Cruise was more than an actor of choice for a Disney Live-action film of John Carter. I thought I read on this site a few years ago that Tom's production company had bought into the rights of the property for development. Past that, Tom would be good for the part. Fanboy dreams of Bruce Campbell just won't happen. Hugh Jackman might be interesting in the part.
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I still agree with Harry that he would be great for this role.
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John Carter stomps serious ass! He's been my hero forever (except for the whole Confederate army thing; nobody's perfect). Hugh Jackman would rule as Carter, as would Michael Clark Duncan as Tars Tarkis... all 10 to 15 feet of him (CGI, with MCD's voice). There could certainly be worse things than Salma Hayek as Dejah Thoris... just think back to her costume in From Dusk Til Dawn. If that sawed off little $cientologist ego maniac Tom Cruise gets anywhere near this, there will be blood in the streets. God hunt the executive who fucks this up!
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Some ERB works are Public Domain in the USA. These works can be REPRINTED as text/books with little fear of legal action, but FILMS or other MEDIA open different liabilities. ERB Inc is ready to work with anyone with legitimate offers (just ask them).
The possibility of a John Carter movie true to the Barsoom stories by Burroughs is exciting. Hope it gets done! If anyone at Paramount is listening I'd rather see UNKNOWNS in the starring roles, though that is not likely from a need to hype box office pre-release advertising. :)
Only posted to provide a note of caution: Copyrights and Trademarks exist, even for John Carter and Barsoom; and Danton Burroughs and ERB Inc. are better friends to the fans of his grandfather's works and possible future projects than a few bad mouths would have you believe.
To see ERB and ERB Inc in action with Internet fandom visit erblist.com -
Apr 12, 2002 11:02:34 PM CDT
Deac Speaks..... First the Muff-Diving Spectacular that was Harr
by deacon
i mean am i the only one grossed out by this? - saiyanvegeta0@yahoo.com
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I only say that because the "humans" on mars don't wear clothes, except for a little loin cloth. Sometimes not even that, except occasionally with a cloak over it all. Most ridiculous costumes ever.
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The emotional core of John Carter on Mars is his LOVE? Pssht! It was obvious that Burroughs only included the love aspect because it was expected of him in a pulp novel. All that "strangely beautiful" and "curiously alluring" mixed in with the occasional holding of hands. Notice that Deja spends more time explaining gadgets than she talks love. John Carter of Mars was more about John Carter kicking ass and being an adolescent-fantasy outlaw hero. No question.
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would be the most natural pick. However, I would go for Chris Rock, or even Jack Nicholson for that certain intangible quality they have in common. Of course there would be sheer box-office value in a Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, or Harrison Ford lead on this film. On second thought, I've always thought Sam Jackson would provide that culturally sensitive touch, possibly bringing some racial healing. But, we all know that instead they are going to go safe, and it will be either Ben Affleck, Tom Cruise, Matt Damon, Canoe Reaves, or Jim Carrey (wow, wouldn't that be something..) - Deadly Serious..
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I grew up reading the JOHN CARTER series as reissued by Ballantine Books with those gorgeous, all-new covers and uniform look in the early 1960s. Best damned sci-fi series I ever read, at least until those wonderful collections of STAR TREK short stories in the late 60s/early 70s. And was I ever the right age for those Ballantine reissues! I had turned 10 in 1960. I read all the reissued imitators, too, mostly in ACE editions, but none could hold a candle to Burroughs. (I also was the perfect age for Marvel Comics' rebirth, starting with the Fantastic Four and SPIDERMAN AND X-MEN in the early 60s, but that's another story for another time.) I had no idea there were JOHN CARTER comics. How did I miss those? I collected tons of comics from the late 50s to the mid 60s, and do not recall seeing a single JOHN CARTER title on the shelves. I always wondered why no one has done a PRINCESS OF MARS movie, which remains the best of the series. And God, do I remember that Ballantine cover!
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For FIGHTCOMMUNISM, JOHN CARTER was around long before Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers. And there is no sic-fi at all in the JOHN CARTTER novels and short stories. Properly speaking, they are fantasies. An American essentially dreams himself to a world of feudal empires, with a princess in distress. No spaceships at all. No clothes, for that matter. When Burroughs wrote these adventures, enough was already known about Mars that the civilization he envisioned could not possibly have existed. He could just as easily have transported John Carter to an alternate dimension, or the moon, or Jupiter, or another galaxy. Pure fantasy. By contrast, FLASH GORDON and BUCK ROGERS had elements of science fiction at their core. Ray guns, spaceships, etc. The Carter series was begun in the aftermath of the Victorian Age, but before WWI. It is a time, at least in Burroughs's mind, when men were gentlemen and women were ladies. And villains were the purest villains. Even sans clothes. It is clearly a never-never land that has more to do with the 1800s than the 1900s, even though all of the stories were penned in the 1900s. The prose is florid, the situations hackneyed...and yet. If you are young enough (in mind or body) when you read these stories, they are simply amazing. They will transport you to another time, place and moral code.
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...and Jennifer Connelly is Dejah Thoris, if she will get off her Callista Flockheart diet. I have been in love with that women for twenty years, and I have been fantasizing about her as the naked Dejah all that time. But I won't like it if she continues to look as sickly as she did at the Oscars. So, who's going to "be" Tars Tarkis? Michael Duncan Clark?
Hang in there and take care!
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Apr 13, 2002 9:06:59 PM CDT
Instead of a live action film what about a CG film like Final Fa
by briancr
If they made a CG film they could create the characters and Mars Scapes as ERB wrote them in the books and you could cast actors for the ability and not looks.
I liked the look of Final Fantasy and given the advaces in computer generated images they could make a kick-ass Pricess of Mars using it and not being held back by using live action filming contraints. Tars-Tarkas would look like he is supposed to as would the Redmen of Helium and the other many colored peoples of Barsoom.
Anyway those are my thoughts on the subject.
BCR -
Apr 13, 2002 10:53:15 PM CDT
Personally I could care less about this franchise, I'd much
by lezbo milk
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I've been in love with John Carter since I read "Prinsess of Mars" (literal translations of the Icelandic title). It was the first book I really fell in love with, with vivid "images" and a great storyline. It's easy to fuck up and I curse the day that Steven Summers was put on the list. His last two film speak volumes of this guys "talent". I second Rodriguez or even Lance (six string samurai) Mungia. I know Rodriguez will never make this because it seems that all these directors that claim that they want to make every type of films, horror, action, thriller usually end up making one type of film everytime. Rodriguez has made two types of film and one of them was a mix of those two, action/crime and horror. I don't remember any horror, action or western from Tarantino, but lets wait and see with The Kill bill. He needs to make something more bigger than the three gangster films he's made. But being a realist I doupt I will see a John carter film project come to light anytime soon. I hope I will but I'm not holding my breath, I'll just read my book instead.
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Apprently a number of readers are confused. A copyright may expire, but TRADEMARKS are FOREVER, as long as the registration fees are timely paid. USE has nothing to do with the value or validation of a registered TRADEMARK. Talk about films and actors and goofy plots all you like. Just avoid talking about goofy law that does not exist. But don't take my word for it, visit http://www.uspto.gov/ and get an education!
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Ok, don't trust any source that tells you there was a fight over the rights.
The John Carter books are PUBLIC DOMAIN. Everybody already has the rights.
I could make a movie and release it at the same time as somebody else, there's nothing they could do about it.
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Do we need another movie comic? Do we need another one night show? __-_{z_
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Leave John Carters ON Mars! Let a Frazetta alone, willya?!
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``The emotional core of John Carter on Mars is his LOVE?``
Yes, it is. His love for Dejah Thoris is the motivator that sets all the swashbuckling in action. It is for love of Dejah Thoris that he studies so hard to learn the language as quickly as possible. It is for love of Dejah Thoris that he gets involved with the Helium/Zodanga War. And, it is for love of Dejah Thoris that, already charged with blasphemy, he builds a secret army to invade Heaven and kick the Gods' collective ass.
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