Robert Zemeckis doing "John Carter of Mars"?

By: Karl Schneider
Date: Thursday, February 08, 2007
Source: film ick

According to film ick, Robert Zemeckis and Disney may be teaming up to make a motion capture John Carter of Mars film.

The site's speculation is based on various emails citing gossip in motion capture circles.

The series tells of a Civil War officer named John Carter who is transported to Mars and finds himself a captive of the savage green men from Thark. Carter eventually rises to become a great warrior, marries a princess, raises a family and embarks on numerous adventures.

The series is the epitome of Development Hell, having been at Disney in development for most of the 1990's before heading to Paramount Pictures in 2002.  Multiple directors have been attached to either an animated or live action version of the series, including: Robert Rodriguez, Kerry Conrad, Jon Favreau, Jeffrey Katzenberg and John McTiernan.

Paramount relinquished the rights about a year ago, and the series had been untouched until a couple months ago, when it was rumored that Pixar came calling.

A representative of the Burroughs estate said Disney was acquiring the live-action rights for a possible tent pole franchise. However, sources at Disney believed Mars to be headed for animated adaptation.


Zemeckis and Disney recently (days ago) signed a deal to open a state of the art Motion Capture facility.


KJ's Take:  This seems like pure speculation at this point, but it certainly seems possible based on what we do know.  All rumors point to this being animated, not live action, which leaves only 3 options at Disney: Pixar, Zemeckis's Motion Capture studio or Disney's own animation studio.

Disney's animation studio seems the most unlikely out of the three and Pixar has never done anything but their own material.  That said, this material was reportedly acquired for Pixar and Disney bought the rights months before the Zemeckis deal went down. 

I would rather see Pixar develop the film, but that's likely because of my obsession with Pixar and my mixed feelings regarding motion capture films.