To me, this is really really exciting news, and I don't get why it isn't being reported in more places. Maybe the movie news media has concluded with the failure of Serenity that audiences aren't interested in space Sci-Fi that doesn't come from a Videogame. I've actually already heard a few grumbles to that effect. Depressing times we live in.
But, the big news is that the director of Elf and Zathura, the host of one of the coolest shows on television, and a really money swinger named Jon Favreau has signed on to direct the movie adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars.
Now when this project started gestating a few years ago, I went and started reading the "John Carter of Mars" books. Though I'm a voracious reader of Science Fiction from that period, and though I've read just about everything else Burroughs has ever written, somehow I'd always missed those. I have to admit… I wasn't impressed. They're very simplistic, there's just not much substance to them. But, the interesting thing about these books is that they're almost screaming to be made into a movie. The material, while not especially compelling as a novel seems ideally suited to be turned into a tremendously great Sci-Fi movie. The concept is a good jumping off point for starters. It's the story of a Civil War solider teleported to Mars. Only Mars isn't the boring place we now know it as, it's populated by hot, green and yellow women and vicious murdering barbarians. Because the stories are so light on depth, their perfect to use as the outline for a movie script, leaving the screenwriter (in this case Mark Protosevich and Ehren Kruger) plenty of room to fill in around the edges.
Bringing Favreau on board finally gives this thing the kind of credibility it was never going to get just having Harry Knowles as a producer. Favs will get things done, and I have to believe that now the movie is really going to happen. Even better, a really promising director has jumped off the family movie bandwagon and (hopefully) moved on to doing something new again with his career. Favreau's a tremendous talent, one I can't get enough of.
Another interesting component in all this will be Favreau's dislike of CGI. He's shunned it on all his films, even the FX heavy movie Zathura. Hopefully, that means he'll be doing a Martian movie free of CGI and with all sorts of really incredible practical effects. Don’t give in to the CGI pressure Favs! Let's do something more interesting.
Jon is actually the third director to be attached to the project. Robert Rodriguez and Kerry Conran respectively have both been involved and then for one reason or another dropped the project. Let's hope Jon sticks.
