BREAKING MOVIE/TV NEWS

Saturday, January 16, 2010

"John Carter" Starts In London

Walt Disney Pictures reports that principal photography has now started in London, UK on "John Carter of Mars'.

"...Academy Award-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton brings this captivating hero to the big screen in a stunning adventure epic set on the wounded planet of Mars, a world inhabited by warrior tribes and exotic desert beings.

"Based on the first of Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Barsoom Series," the film chronicles the journey of Civil-War veteran John Carter, who finds himself battling a new and mysterious war amidst a host of strange Martian inhabitants..."

"I have been waiting my whole life to see the characters and worlds of 'John Carter of Mars' realized on the big screen," said Stanton, director of "WALL-E".

"It is just a wonderful bonus to have anything to do with it".

The ensemble cast is led by Canadian actor Taylor Kitsch ("X-Men Origins: Wolverine') as 'John Carter', Lynn Collins ("50 First Dates") as warrior princess 'Dejah Thoris' and Willem Dafoe ("Spider-Man") as the Martian 'Tars Tarkas'.

Cast also includes Thomas Haden Church ("Sideways"), Polly Walker ("Patriot Games"), Samantha Morton ("Elizabeth: The Golden Age"), Mark Strong ("Sherlock Holmes"), Ciaran Hinds ("There Will Be Blood"), Dominic West ("300"), James Purefoy ("Resident Evil") and Bryan Cranston ("Breaking Bad"). Daryl Sabara ("Spy Kids") takes the role of John Carter's teenaged nephew, 'Edgar Rice Burroughs'.

The creative team includes Oscar-nominated production designer Nathan Crowley ("The Dark Knight"), costume designer Mayes Rubeo ("Avatar"), cinematographer Daniel Mindel ("Star Trek") and video effects supervisor Peter Chiang ("The Bourne Ultimatum").

John Carter debuted in "A Princess of Mars", the first Burroughs novel set on a fictionalized version of Mars, written in 1911, then serialized as "Under the Moons of Mars" in the February to July 1912 issues of the magazine "All-Story", before being published in book form, October 1917.
Carter reappeared in subsequent volumes of the series, including "The Gods of Mars (1918), "The Warlord of Mars" (1919), "Swords of Mars" (1936) and "Llana of Gathol (1948).

Carter is also a major secondary character in the fourth volume, "Thuvia, Maid of Mars" (1920), and the ninth, "Synthetic Men of Mars" (1940).

According to Burroughs, Carter stands 6′2″ tall, with close-cropped black hair and 'steel-gray eyes', having served as a captain in the American Civil War on the side of the Confederacy. After the war, he struck it rich finding gold in Arizona. But while hiding from Apaches in a cave, he seemingly dies, leaving his inanimate body behind and is mysteriously transported by a form of astral projection to the planet Mars, re-embodied in a form identical to his earthly one, but much stronger than the natives of Mars.


Click the images to enlarge...