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Burrough's Martian Tales Optioned 169

Posted by Hemos from the do-it-and-do-it-well dept.
shagrat writes "One of my favorite series of books has been optioned by Paramount. It would be produced by those that created 'The Mummy'. I'm not sure how that makes me feel."
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Burrough's Martian Tales Optioned More

Burrough's Martian Tales Optioned

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  • Yeah, you know, another GREAT movie with the Rock in it...
    • I hope that's the Rock I smell...otherwise, I'm doing laundry tonight.

    • no doubt that (Score:2, Funny)

      by xeeno ( 313431 )
      they'll put brendan frasier in as Deja Thoris
      • they'll put brendan frasier in as Deja Thoris

        God that would be awful.

        Seriously, who do you think would make a good cast for this?
        Someone who can actually fence would be needed for John Carter, but it seems unlikely :-(

        These are my favorite books after The Iliad.

        • I've seen her before, Deja Vu!

          Nobody in Hollywoodland (what the sign originally said) can fence, they almost all do Flynning. Errol Flynn was so inept at swords, they invented a beat--beat--beat-beat-beat move that Errol could actually remember and not stick his co-actor with. Hollywoodland has used it ever since for sword fights. (Possibly even in Star Trek:OS Day of the Dove.) A sword move invented for a boozy nazi-symp.

          I loved the Barsoomian role-playing game, where it had a bad social-interaction roll where you spilled your ice-cream down the front of a princesses's dress. (Then explained in small type that Barsoomian princesses have topless gowns. Tsk, don't be such a calot!)

          This thread is completely off topic because this is Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom rather than H.G. Wells' sneezy Mars, or Ray Bradbury's kind-of-weird Mars, Total Recall Mars, etc.

  • Well, if they did make it a movie you can be
    certain the special FX would be stellar. Hopefully they will remain true to the books
    and the genre. Maybe LOTR has opened the
    doors for more great fantasy and scifi to migrate to the silver screen.

    • Re:Special Effects (Score:2, Insightful)

      by zaffir ( 546764 )
      More like more great fantasy and scifi books turned horrible movies. Pretty soon everyone will be trying to ride the (much deserved) succes of LotR and the crap will start to show up.

      I sure hope that isn't the case with Martian Tales, but i wouldn't be surprised if it was.
    • Or Sarcasm. LOTR is the first and only book that I liked that has turned into a good movie. Perhaps you are right and it will encourage movie people to keep closer to the intent of the book. But that is not what history has taught me. Puppet Masters. Starship Troopers. Johhny Mnemonic. Etc. I think the crew that brought you The Mummy Returns will deliver eye candy, and little else. OTOH, X-Men was true to the original material...
  • I love those books, download them from Project Gutenberg and read them on your palm!

  • got to be good (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    well if it's by the Mummy people, I'm sure they'll leave the plot untouched. AND it's almost guaranteed to have a-list actors like the Rock and Brendan Frasier in it!!! good!
    • Don't you think Brendan Fraser should get a few props? School Ties, Mrs. Winterbourne, With Honors, Gods and Monsters... hell even The Scout! All were what I would consider A-list acting performances. ESPECIALLY his "big break" in School Ties, as the star Jew on a christian Ivy-prep football team? It was awesome; he could have been bigger than Brad Pitt. Lord knows he looks better and is BUILT better.

      But what was he thinking when someone talked him into crap like George of the Jungle and Encino Man? Pauly Shore actually passed as entertainment in this country in the dark ages of the early 90s?!? I can almost Forgive The Mummy Returns because the original was a hit and he was doing a follow-up, but he got seriously wronged by an agent several times in his career. *Cough* Dudley Do-Right *Cough*

      I am a straight married man, but I don't know of a stright woman or gay man who can look into Brendan's eyes on screen, when he's laying it all out on the line, and not get all gushy inside. One of my co-workers named her son Brendan for this very reason.

      Anyways, enough gushing, back to the discussion.

      • It was awesome; he could have been bigger than Brad Pitt. Lord knows he looks better and is BUILT better.

        The hell you say! Brad Pitt is way better looking, and his muscles are... wait, why do I know this... OH GOD! I'M GAY!

    • Thankyou VERY much indeed!

  • How do you option public domain? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wahay ( 12517 ) on Friday April 12, 2002 @06:32PM (#3332293) Homepage
    I was certain these books were in the public domain. You can download them off project gutenberg. Why is a studio paying good money to 'option' them? Perhaps they'd pay me for my permission to option Hamlet.....
    • the money might go to a screenplay rework?
    • People do have to actually write the script - you can't just give the book to the actors and expect a film!
      • So you think Paramount is paying for exclusive rights to a script? I don't think so. OPTION implies that someone owns the exclusive rights to produce a movie based on the novel. If the story itself is public domain, then the studio could just hire their own scriptwriter and not pay anyone for any "rights". An example would be TOMBSTONE and WYATT EARP coming out the same year, based on the same story, with their own scripts.
      • It depends on the actors and the setting. Giving an old book to a bunch of improv-specialists, telling them to go to it, and filming the result might make an excellent experiment. Anyone ever heard of something like this (Its almost certainly been done - also funny, what films SHOULD have been made this way -- I vote for The Phantom Menace ':7).
    • I thought copyright lasted for 50 years after death of author now. Does Project Gutenberg ONLY print public domain stuff? Maybe they have been granted right to distribute for free because the author's heirs want people reading the storys. Popularity of the story would promote the value of the movie rights.
    • I was certain these books were in the public domain.

      Well, the writings themselves pretty much HAVE to be (the first book was written in 1912, according to the article).

      The article mentions:
      Danton Burroughs, grandson of Edgar Rice Burroughs and a director of the rights holding company[...]

      I wonder exactly what "rights" the "holding company" has? Perhaps they've Trademarked the characters? That would (as I understand it) mean that verbatim copies of the original stories are public domain, but "derivative works" using any of the trademarked characters or settings would need to license them (which, to me, emphasizes the bogosity of Disney's "Mickey Mouse Must Be Protected By Eternal Copyright Or The World Will End(tm)" arguments - since I'm pretty sure they maintain Trademark rights to Mickey and co., the only thing really at issue is free distribution of some of their really old works...)

        • That would (as I understand it) mean that verbatim copies of the original stories are public domain, but "derivative works" using any of the trademarked characters or settings would need to license them

        Yes, if you want to use them in a commercial way, or to pass your interpretation off as canon, or use them in a transformative fashion that might dilute or cheapen the brand. Writing a non-commercial fan fiction work in the spirit of the originals that does not attempt to pass itself off as an original is protected (assuming you've got the resources to prove your innocence when the estate sicks a pack of lawyers on you).

    • Re:How do you option public domain? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Bourbonium ( 454366 ) on Friday April 12, 2002 @06:51PM (#3332392)
      Nothing Burroughs wrote is in the public domain. His family has maintained control over all of his estate and renews the copyrights on all of his works whenever they are due to expire. He was so successful during his lifetime that an entire industry evolved out of the Tarzan series, and his family owns a lot of Los Angeles Real Estate. That's how the city of Tarzana, California came to be incorporated; it was originally the Burroughs family estate. ERB was almost a corporation unto himself!
      • Just a nitpick.

        Tarzana is not a separate incorporated city, it is part of the city of Los Angeles. It is, however, a separate named community within that city.

        If the San Fernando Valley secedes from the City of L.A., Tarzana will become part of the city of San Fernando Valley (I think that's what they chose).
      • and renews the copyrights on all of his works whenever they are due to expire

        This is now nonsensical as copyrights are no longer "renewed." The only way to get extensions is to to buy numerous congresspeople and get law passed. However, in 1963, the failure to renew several of his copyrights did place major works into the public domain. As he's been dead for 52 years, any item copyrighted in 1923 or earlier has also expired.

        The balance is public domain by Australian law, and is available at Gutenberg Australia [gutenberg.net.au]
      • Kind of ironic that Billy lived in Lawrence friggin Kansas, on the wrong side of the tracks!
      • Burroughs used to live in my hometown: Parma, Idaho. Population 2000. Here's an article from the Argus Observer (the remaining Parma newspaper died a few years ago).

        Tarzan author lived in Parma
        Dawn Eden, Argus Observer, July 10, 2000
        The Online News & Information Network for the Western Treasure Valley Argus Observer

        For more than the past century, famous people have come and gone from Idaho. One man few people know resided in Parma for a short time was Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of "Tarzan."

        Burroughs was born in Chicago Sept. 1, 1875, and first came to Idaho in the late 1800s, joining
        his brothers in working at Sweetser Ranch, located west of American Falls.

        Inside the Old Fort Boise replica in Parma, a historical display about Burroughs describe how he
        mended fences and drove cattle at the ranch, before returning to Chicago a year later to finish
        school.

        After bouncing between Idaho and Chicago, and marrying Emma Hulbert, a childhood neighbor in
        Chicago in 1900, Burroughs returned to Idaho for the third, and last time, in 1903.

        He was invited by his brothers to rejoin them in Idaho. His brothers, Harry, George and Frank,
        along with a man named Louis Sweetser, had reorganized the Yale Dredging Co. into the
        Sweetser-Burroughs Mining Co.

        It was written when Burroughs arrived in Idaho for the last time, his brothers were operating a gold dredge in the Stanley Basin and on the Snake River in Parma.

        Parma historian, the late Lucille Peterson, once wrote that prior to Burroughs' move from
        Stanley to Parma in 1903, the Parma residents began making plans for a "village government."
        Peterson wrote that during the town election in April 1904, several nominations appeared on the ballot, one of whom was Burroughs, and he won by one vote 49 to 48. He served about one month.

        It was published in the "Edgar Rice Burroughs Amateur Press Association" fanzine that Burroughs "had run as an independent but had still managed to secure enough votes to edge his way in.

        "Burroughs recalled, I button-holed every voter that I met, told him that I was running for
        office and that I did not want to be embarrassed by not getting a single vote and asking him as a personal favor to cast his vote for me, with the result that enough of them tried to save me from embarrassment to cause my election.'"

        Peterson wrote she agreed that Burroughs' decision to run as an independent was probably how he got the votes. Parma, she told one of the contributing authors of the "Edgar Rice Burroughs
        Amateur Press Association" fanzine, was at that time an intensely political town with two competing newspapers one Democrat and one Republican. An Independent offered an extra choice to members of both parties.

        Burroughs served with the Parma town government only a short time, and after the dredging company went bankrupt, he left Idaho for the last time, moving to Utah for a job as a railroad policeman.

        He eventually ended up in California where he spent the rest of his life writing.

        Burroughs began his writing career when he was in his mid 30s while he was proofreading advertising for "pulp magazines" in California. It was written that his "eyes strayed to an adjoining column of the magazine, a bit of fiction, and he quickly decided that he could write imaginary tales more appealing than that one."

        It was at that time he wrote, "Under the Moons of Stars," and mailed it to an All Story magazine editor, who sent Burroughs $4 for a six-part series.

        In 1912, Burroughs began writing "Tarzan of the Apes." When he wrote "Tarzan," All Story
        Magazine purchased it for $7, and two years later it was published as a book.

        The first "Tarzan" movie was released in 1918.

        The story of Tarzan begins with his parents, "John Clayton," Lord Greystroke of England, and his wife, the former "Hon. Alice Rutherford." Lady Alice was pregnant when the ship, carrying the couple to her husband's mission in Africa, sinks and the couple ends up on the coast.

        Their son was born in 1888, and she passed away about a year later.

        Lord Greystroke died a short time later.

        Upon his parents' death, the child, named John Clayton after his father, is adopted by a gray ape named "Kala." Kala's mate, "Tublat," is jealous of the child and makes his life as miserable as he can.

        By the time Tarzan, named so by Kala, is 10 years old, he has the strength of a man in his
        prime, but he is far more agile.

        He teaches himself to read and print in English, and when he is in his late teens, he encounters Caucasians.

        Tarzan is returned to civilization by the Frenchman Paul d'Arnot, and eventually marries an American, Jane Porter.

        Before Burroughs died March 19, 1950, at the age of 74, he wrote more than 20 books about Tarzan. All together, he was the author of more than 80 adventure stories.

        During the years he lived in Idaho, Burroughs was not a writer, but when he became one in later years, he did not forget this region of the country and used characters and locales from the area in his stories.

        In an article Peterson wrote about Burroughs, she quotes him as once saying he had not learned a single rule for writing fiction. "I wrote stories which I feel would entertain me, knowing that there are millions of people just like me.

        The Old Fort Boise replica in Parma is home to the Tarzan' author Edgar Rice Burroughs
        historical display. About six years ago, the display was created with the history of the
        author's life in Parma. The display also contains old Tarzan' magazines and books about the famed character Burroughs created.

        Copyright 2000 Wick Communications, Inc.
      • "That's how the city of Tarzana, California came to be incorporated"

        And to think there was a time when all Tarzan had to think about was how to keep Jane happy and whether his vine would snap! :o)
        • Nothing Burroughs wrote is in the public domain.

        I'll just go ahead and assert that everything Burroughs wrote is in the public domain.

        • His family [...] renews the copyrights on all of his works whenever they are due to expire.

        Pish tosh. Please don't post such utter nonsense. There is no mechanism for "renewing copyright" on a work, other than by bribing Congress to change the law. You can defend a trademark, which is probably what you are talking about, but that's not what you said.

        If I release a non-commercial derivative work based on Barsoom trademarks that does not pass itself off as an original, or cheapen the brand, then any reasonably objective court would protect that usage. However, whether I could afford to let it go to court is a different question. The irony of it is that anyone with the resources to defend their use of Burrough's trademarks (like a production company) will likely be using them in a commercial and transformative way that is not protected fair use.

    • Why is a studio paying good money to 'option' them?

      Aside from the people who point out that it's not necessarily under public domain, the article mentions:
      For almost a decade, Disney spent millions developing the "Mars" books as both a live-action and animation franchise[...]



      Jacks acknowledged that there "is a complicated legal situation and significant rights (still) need to be acquired.



      =Brian

  • Current technology (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kargan ( 250092 ) on Friday April 12, 2002 @06:34PM (#3332304) Homepage
    //Jacks told Daily Variety that three of the best-known books (which include "Gods of Mars" and "The Warlord of Mars") are likely to be made into films of a scope "akin to 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'Star Wars,' but were impossible to make before, because CGI (computer technology) wasn't there."//

    So, bearing this statement in mind, are there any stories out there which still cannot be effectively made into movies due to lack of technology?

    • Re:Current technology (Score:4, Funny)

      by 56ker ( 566853 ) on Friday April 12, 2002 @06:44PM (#3332355) Homepage Journal
      Yeah the story of my life - no technology exists to make it interesting enough for people to actually want to go to see a film about it.
    • I really don't think so: it's more a question of budget, if you think that a budget of $500M/$1B is acceptable, I don't see many 'stories' unfeasible for technological reasons alone.

      There *are* a lot of stories that are unfeasible for other reasons (scope) one of the best known IMHO is the Foundation Trilogy, while technologically would be fairly expensive due to all the CG shots, making it in a movie that's not 16 hours long and is still nearly as good as the books would be quite an undertaking.

      • Some reason, I see the Foundation trilogy as a TV mini-series. The key problems would be casting and screenwriting. You can limp around the special effects (but not Warlords of Mars).
        Another cool idea would be sci-fi series around I Robot/Elijah Bailey.
    • I would say the following would be *really* difficult not because of technology which renders such questions moot but just to VISUALIZE and adequatley convey the scope of said project:

      Larry Niven's Ringworld [amazon.com] -Been proposed many a time but no filmaker has yet to accept the challenge

      Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars [amazon.com] - how do you adequately portray a space elevator? The massive terraforming of a world? How do you convey the SCOPE?

      There are probably others but I am kindof lazy right now. You get the point though - any sufficently large hard-to-conceputalize book would do it.
      • Any Discworld book. Except maybe The Last Hero... it's short and has a lot of action, that one might make a decent 2-hour movie.

        Hyperion and its sequels. There's almost no way one could make a movie out of the first book. A mini-series, maybe. Endymion and Rise of Endymion are more narrative, maybe you could squeeze the plot there down to 6 hours, but without all the background from Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion, the Endymion story isn't nearly as powerful or effective.

        Awesome visuals, though, like the sunset and storm on the gas giant... and I'd love to see a treeship.
      • There's very strong, and I mean very strong, rumour that a Ringworld movie is being worked on.

        See the Movie link at www.larryniven.com.
    • sure: Diaspora

      ISBN: 0061057983

      • that's what I get for being flippant.

        Description of Diaspora From The Publisher:
        Behold the Orphan. Born into a world that is not a world. A digital being grown from a mind seed, a genderless cybernetic citizen in a vast network of probes, satellites, and servers knotting the Solar System into one scape, from the outer planets to the fiery surface of the Sun. Since the Introdus in the 21st century, humanity has reconfigured itself drastically. Most chose immortality, joining the polises to become conscious software. Others opted for gleisners: disposable, renewable robotic bodies that remain in contact with the physical world of force and friction. Many of these have left the Solar System forever in fusion drive starships. And there are the holdouts. The fleshers left behind in the muck and jungle of Earth - some devolved into dream-apes; others cavorting in the seas or the air; while the statics and bridgers try to shape out a roughly human destiny. But the complacency of the citizens is shattered when an unforeseen disaster ravages the fleshers, and reveals the possibility that the polises themselves might be at risk from bizarre astrophysical processes that seem to violate fundamental laws of nature. The Orphan joins a group of citizens and flesher refugees in a search for the knowledge that will guarantee their safety...

    • I've also been fantasizing about a movie series of the whole Elric of Melnibone books. Obviously with a Blue Oyster Cult soundtrack. Possibly starring Jerry Busey (he's not an albino, but his father played one in Lethal Weapon - they're so pale, they can pass for one).
    • Until we can cheaply send a whole bunch of actors into orbit, I can't see the "Smoke Ring" or "Integral Trees" movies being made. You could try to pull of the trees with CGI, and try to do the zero-G a few minutes a time in a thoroughly blue-screened Vomet Comet, but I'll bet the result would suck.
  • Sometimes these movies just don't turn out. Why not make a movie based on website? Can you imagine what a movie about Slashdot or NerdTreeHouse [nerdtreehouse.com] would look like? I want movies based on websites! Are you with me?

    • Re:What about a movie based on a website? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      People would just think a Slashdot movie a ripoff of LOTR/harry potter because of all of the trolls =p
    • I actually think a slashdot movie would be good- I can see it now- kevin smith directing and playing CowboyNeal...

      it would sorta be like office space....
    • A movie about Slashdot? Hmmm...

      Hemos: "Someone's pointing out /. editor hypocrisy!
      CmdrTaco: "To our WinME PC!"
      --stops for game of Warcraft 3 Beta, on Official Battle.net Server--
      Hemos: "Oooo, shiny!"
      CmdrTaco: "I am a Priestess of the Moon! Worship me!"

      Woman in Audience: "What a piece of garbage!"
      Man in Audience: "Well, what do you expect? They're Internet Poseurs."

      CmdrTaco: "My Hippogryph just shit on your little pussy peasant!"

      Stan Marsh in Audience: "Where do they come up with this stuff!"

      --167 minutes pass--

      .
      .
      .
      .
      .
      .
      Hemos, CmdrTaco: "BitchSlap!!! All who question our ethics, and all who moderate them up! They shall never Moderate again!"

  • depends (Score:2, Insightful)

    by eric6 ( 126341 )
    it depends on what sort of movie you're looking for. If you want a tongue-in-cheek adventure movie, perhaps these are the producers for you. if you want something harder-edged, maybe not. on the other hand, one's previous work in the film industry isn't always a good indicator about what one can/will do.

  • it should make you feel good (Score:3, Insightful)

    by elmegil ( 12001 ) on Friday April 12, 2002 @06:37PM (#3332318) Homepage Journal
    The Burroughs books are pure space opera. Of course the people who did 'The Mummy' can do them justice, they're pretty fluffy already. I think this will be really impressive if it really comes to the screen.
    • The Burroughs books are pure space opera. Of course the people who did 'The Mummy' can do them justice, they're pretty fluffy already.

      I will not disagree with you that they are pure fluff but, then again, so was Star Wars. Would you *really* want the guys who did the Mummy to do Star Wars? Do you think they would turn out the same? Didn't think so. =).

      P.S. they would probably make something with a horrid plot, an annoying sidekick that appeals to children, and a long-drawn out 'race' ... oh. Right.
      • I don't think any of the Barsoon novels had horrid sidekicks. PanDanChee, TorDuBar, many others?

        Granted they had testosterone bonding problems... "You fight good, I would like to die for you and 'cause you jump so well John Carter! You crazy fighting man, and I have hots for your daughter Tara!"

  • English author? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bourbonium ( 454366 ) on Friday April 12, 2002 @06:42PM (#3332349)
    I have a tendendcy to trust CNN reports for accuracy, but they refer to ERB as an English author. He was as American as applie pie and All Story magazine. Get yer facts straight, man.

    All that aside, I've dreamed of seeing the John Carter series on the screen since I was a schoolboy, reading all twelve books in sequence, purchased through the Science Fiction Book Club. I knew even then that such a project would be far too expensive to ever be realized successfully (and having seen what happened to other ERB books that were filmed in the 1970s; remember "The Land/People that Time Forgot" and "At the Earth's Core?"). But now that CGI effects have made such large-scale fantasies technically possible, and the boxoffice success of similar films makes them financially feasible, I can see "A Princess of Mars" being turned into a pretty good Saturday Afternoon popcorn matinee hit, just as the Mummy films were.

    I hope they don't make the entire series, though, since the books were very uneven in quality. The series was so popular that Burroughs was under a lot of pressure from the publisher to grind them out very quickly over the years and some of them are really quite poor, hitting the low point with the last one, which was supposedly completed by Burrough's son after his death and based on some very sketchy notes.

    • The Land that Time Forgot was written by the Scottish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - of Sherlock Holmes fame.

    • reading all twelve books in sequence,
      Where can I find the other 2 books? All available evidence indicates that there are only 10.
      The Tarzan series has 24.

      • Oops, my bad.
        11 books, the last of which was really 2 books in one.

        Never mind.
        • Having long since sold off my old book collection, I no longer have my SFBC series to check, but I did pull out Richard A. Lupoff's "BARSOOM: Edgar Rice Burroughs and the Martian Vision" (1976, Mirage Press, Baltimore, MD) to refresh my memory. Lupoff notes that the eleventh book in the series, "John Carter of Mars," was published in 1964, 14 years after Burroughs' death and almost 20 years after "Llana of Gathol," was published in 1948. "Llana" was actually four separate novelettes first published in Amazing stories in 1941. "John Carter of Mars" consisted of two separate novelettes, "John Carter and the Giant of Mars" and "The Skeleton Men of Jupiter," which apparently made me think they were two separate books.

          I stand corrected.
      • Theoretically twelve. I've seen twelve in the late seventies. However the twelfth book has three-legged martian rats, and that just doesn't jib with the other books. And the style doesn't match. (ERB was harder to match than LRH for ghost writers padding out the text.)

        Gods, I could pull out the SPI game manuals for John Carter, Warlord of Mars. Those were written by a real fanatic!

  • Somehow I don't expect we'll get to see Deja Thoris' knockers. A pity.
    • Never mind the knockers (topless dresses). She lays eggs! And those eggs grow over several months. Hell green martians eggs grow over several years. How do they do that?!

      Sure, we have no genetic background on John Carter, he doesn't remember his childhood, just back to the Civil War as the same age, and does his Captain Trips trips to Barsoom.

      I supose he could be a barsoomian, but he's got that Earthling Strength attribute that he passes on to Carthoras, Tavia, and Llana, etc. Are eggs in his gene code? Cluck-cluck!

  • is the fact that Blixa Bargeld [imdb.com] of Einsturzende Neubauten fame was the growl behind the mummy. That was one "industrial" mummy. Otherwise the movie sucked ass. Hopefully, this new creation will be better. Maybe they can get the whole band to do growling/banging/whatever?

  • Full circle (Score:2, Insightful)

    by eGabriel ( 5707 )
    You can see bits of Burroughs' influence in just about any science fiction film today. I am really excited about the possibility of seeing this stuff on the big screen, especially if it maintains the settings of the books.

    I don't see any reason why the producers of "The Mummy" would be a bad choice. "The Mummy" was very much in the vein of pulp sci-fi and the old movies that arose from it. In fact, he'd probably make a super John Carter.

    Who do you think WILL play John Carter?
  • At last they can try to bring the strange and wonderful characters of Barsoom to the big screen. And they're gonna need some serious digital artistry to make Deja Thoris look *half* as good as she does when Burroughs describes her. :)

    I hope they get one of the great Hong Kong fight directors for this, too. Imagine what they could do with low gravity and Tars Tarkas!

  • Optioned long ago by animator Bob Clampett! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by StefanJ ( 88986 ) on Friday April 12, 2002 @07:05PM (#3332458) Homepage Journal
    Remember, folks, that options don't always pan out.

    Sometimes treatments get made. Sometimes scripts get written. Sometimes the projects go into "pre-production," which I suspect is Hollywoodese for "We're trying to line up the funding!"

    I am pretty sure I remember the ERB Mars books being optioned about twenty years back . . . vague recollections from Starlog, which seemed to specialize in drool-spewing stories about upcoming movies.

    Perhaps my title isn't totally accurate. An actual option may not have been involved. I do know that Bob Clampett, creator of "Beany and Cecil" and one of the deranged guys behind the Warner Bros. cartoons, made animated-pencil-sketch segments of ERB Mars characters.

    I saw stills of some of these . . . a guy riding a six-legged beastie (thark?). Kind of stylish and simple, not the lurid Frazetta type art that people seem to envision when ERB stories are mentioned.

    So. Don't get your hopes up. Even if it gets made, don't get your hopes up. It could be turned into kiddie toy fodder.

    My advice: Go hunt up the books. It is about time they were reprinted anyway.

    Stefan

    • The option deal I (might) have read about in Starlog wasn't the Clampett one.

      Clampett's work on the project happened a LONG time ago. I'm sure a Google search would turn something up, but I think it was the late 1940s.

      Stefan

      • Clampett's work on the project happened a LONG time ago. I'm sure a Google search would turn something up[...]

        Looking at what came up on MY google search ("Edgar Rice Burroughs" "Bob Clampett"), it appears that some images related to this project might actually be in the "extras" section of a Beany and Cecil DVD that has evidently been released...

    • I saw stills of some of these . . . a guy riding a six-legged beastie (thark?). Kind of stylish and simple, not the lurid Frazetta type art that people seem to envision when ERB stories are mentioned.

      No, not thark, thoat. Tharks were something else. Ask Deep Thoat.

    • And let's not forget the rumors of a John Carter script treatment commissioned by/for Patrick Swayze a few years back.


    • I saw stills of some of these . . . a guy riding a six-legged beastie (thark?). Kind of stylish and simple, not the lurid Frazetta type art that people seem to envision when ERB stories are mentioned.



      It would have to have that lurid Franzetta look in order to really catch the filmgoer's eye! Anything less exotic or lurid would make this movie an intense snoozefest. In fact, I wouldn't want a hint of modernism in this film. It'll be hard to get a suspension of belief considering that Mars is a barren, freezing, poorly lit planet; the movie would have to go for a surreal fantasy landscape.

  • ...save the bad plot and acting. It was pure entertainment and it was good for what it was. At least with these stories, there may be some actual substance.

    So long as they don't cast Encino man.

  • Ugh... (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by guinsu ( 198732 )
    No wonder people dislike sci-fi so much when crap like this gets made into a movie. I mean seriously, its horrendously outdated adventure crap so its just going to be a big special effects extravaganza with no plot. Here we go with another "Scoprion King" or "Tomb Raider"

  • aahhh! (Score:4, Funny)

    by apachetoolbox ( 456499 ) on Friday April 12, 2002 @07:12PM (#3332487) Homepage
    Studio brass obviously take comfort in knowing Jacks and Daniels are on the job -- the duo made Universal's wildly successful "The Mummy" and "The Mummy Returns" movies...
    Jack Daniels was the cause of The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, that explains a lot...

  • From the author of Tarzan! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Xtifr ( 1323 ) on Friday April 12, 2002 @07:17PM (#3332504) Homepage
    I'm an old ERB fan myself, but let's not forget that he is the author of Tarzan. Frankly, I'm surprised that it's taken Hollywood this long to option up the Barsoom tales. As for the studios "ruining" the stories, well, they sorta ruined Tarzan too, but the end result was, in the long run, still very entertaining.

    We're not exactly talking great literature here. Yes, I'm a fan, but I don't delude myself. These are entertaining young-adult action-adventure stories, and as such, the creators of The Mummy seem like a perfectly good choice.

    As for Deja Thoris' "nekkid bosoms", well, consider the Tarzan movies, and don't get your hopes up. If they found an exuse to cover Jane's breasts, they'll probably find an excuse to cover Deja Thoris' too. No biggie, if these are popular and produce spinoffs, eventually, a modern Bo Derek will step up to the plate and offer her hooters for the role. :)
    • As for the studios "ruining" the stories...

      Well, exactly. Besides, the movie doesn't really have any impact on the book. Frank Herbert's Dune series is just as fabulous after the equally horrid David Lynch and Sci-Fi channel butcherings of it as it was before. Heinlein's Starship Troopers is still a remarkable book despite Paul Verhoeven's (only tangentially related) film version.

      Frankly, I think it's a little silly to even compare movies and books. Talking about the movie version of a book is a bit like hoping for the sculpture version of Beethoven's Fifth. The relationship is tenuous at best.

    • Maybe with all the new Slashdot advert. income, /. could buy in for a 'hot grits' shot??

      Now, really, WHO would make the best Dejah? the best Princess?

      I just really want to see one of the four-armed green guys!!
  • I first read The warlord of mars series when I was 12, I'd love to see it as a movie.
  • It makes me feel icky all over.

    Just like that time when Uncle Jim touched me in my private place, out behind his barn.

  • Great adventure story (Score:3, Informative)

    by rhea ( 104104 ) on Friday April 12, 2002 @07:37PM (#3332588) Homepage
    If they actually make A Princess of Mars into a movie, it will be worth seeing. Edgar Rice Burroughs deserves to be known for more than Tarzan. His Martian Tales are great adventure novels.

    For those who haven't read A Princess of Mars, it goes a bit like this...

    John Carter is a calvary captain of the former Confederacy, prospecting in the hills of Arizona in 1866. A strange force draws him across the "trackless immensity of space" to Mars.

    He first falls in with a warrior tribe of green Martians. They capture a lovely woman of the more human-like red Martians, with whom Carter falls in love. A rollicking adventure ensues, complete with radium-powered propulsion-ray personal hovercraft, arena combat, princesses and ransoms, treachery and last-minute heroics and a cliff-hanger ending to leave you weeping...

    Burroughs spins a fine yarn,and his tech and storylines are already so cinematic that adaptation shouldn't be too difficult. The only thing that they probably will change is that generally the characters wear jeweled harnesses and not much else.

    • complete with radium-powered propulsion-ray personal hovercraft[...]

      As I recall, around the time this story was written, Radium with the Spiffy New Thing. As I recall from my readings of the "Blahblahblah of Mars" series many, many years ago, I seem to recall that science-fictiony stuff throughout was "Radium powered", from guns that shot radium bullets to Radium-powered lights. In the "Real World", at the same time, Radium turned into a health(!) fad. The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices [mtn.org] has bits and pieces related to this, including a box from the time labelled as containing Radium Suppositories (No joke!)

      The website above has a couple of pictures of other Radium related "health" things, as well as a bunch of other rather mind-boggling things...

      I hope the filmmakers KEEP the absurd "Radium" stuff in the movie, frankly (as well as any other "early-1900's sci-fi" elements of style) rather than doing something screwy to make it more "modern"...

  • I loved those books as well, but after the third or fourth one they all got really repetitive.

    The other funny thing was that the plot was basically indistinguishable from his other famous series, Tarzan.

    I can see why Hollywood would want to remake them, though. . .

  • apparently the movie will be called John Carter of Mars.
    there's a countdown to the movie at http://www.countingdown.com/movies/johncarterofmar s [countingdown.com]

  • Before I actually went to the site, I thought they were referring to William Bourrough's work.. Can you imagine Naked Lunch redone by the producers of The Mummy?

    I'd like to see the Rock play a mugwump
  • Crap, looks like someone already got Burrough's Martian Tales. They signed and now we're going to lose our funding. Unless... Okay get this how about "William S. Burroughs's Tales of Martians?" We can get the option cheap. It'll interest sci-fi geeks, get in the arthouse crowd, and bring in the perverts. Lets get cracking on this. Props: I want to see a penis shaped raygun by next week. Writers: Get me a screenplay and then hire some temps to cut out sections and paste them on a whiteboard while wearing blindfolds. Make sure the final version has someone playing a flute with his ass.

    Fake name, production manager.
  • Project Gutenberg has all of Burrough's works available in electronic format.

    Princess of Mars [promo.net]
  • At one time I was so addicted to the Warlord of Mars series I read practically nothing else. For some strange reason my dad had a collection of the first three books in one volume sitting on a shelf in his library (aka my bedroom), and one day I discovered it. Normally, I completely ignored his books because they were mostly really boring things, but the cover caught my attention. His books all came from the book of the month club, I guess, because he didn't want to waste time finding books on his own. If I hadn't pulled Warlord of Mars off the shelf, it never would have been read and would surely have ended up at Goodwill.

    I took it with me when I left home to go live in the woods for the summer after high school. It was the only thing I had to read, other than the 10 year old magazines lying around the camp I stayed at. If only I had brought all of the books in the series with me, I would have had something else to read after the first week. I ended up reading it something like 5 times that summer.

    And now - this. I've always hoped they would make a Warlord of Mars movie, and I've always dreaded it. It's always a crapshoot when Hollywood gets a hold of something you cherish, except the odds are far worse than craps. Looks like they've rolled snake eyes this time. How could they do this?! How could they hand something this precious to the Mummy idiots? Their first mummy movie sucked, and the second one was one of the worst movies I've ever seen (if not *the* worst). Just watch, they'll have some dipshit like the Rock as John Carter and Pamela Anderson as Dejah Thoris. Or some doughboy like Kevin Costner and a wench like Cameron Diaz. Oh god, I feel ill.

    Okay, melodrama aside, it's going to be a disaster. Why not give it to someone who makes quality action/fantasy films instead of just someone who can rake in the $$? How about Peter Jackson, who's already shown he can adapt classic fantasy to the big screen?
  • Anybody remeber No Holds Barred [imdb.com] starring Hulk Hogan? I have a feeling The Mummy will be just as memorable. This does not bode well.
  • I don't see anyone else commenting on the 1979 miniseries of the Martian Chronicles. I remember watching it at the time, and I wasn't terribly impressed. I haven't read the books, though. Does anyone else remember the miniseries?

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