Hugo-awarding winning author Michael Chabon will pen the script for the upcoming “John Carter of Mars,” according to io9.
Chabon will adapt the text of the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, “Princess of Mars” for the big-screen for Disney. The novel is the first of eleven novels about Carter that could be adapted for the big-screen.
Chabon won the Hugo award last year for his novel, “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union.” He also wrote the best-selling novel, “The Adventures of Cavalier and Clay” and wrote an early draft of “Spider-Man 2.”
“I’ve been hired to do some revisions to an already strong script by Andrew Stanton and Mark Andrews,” Chabon said on his web site. “I wrote my original screenplay ‘The Martian Agent’ back in 1995 because I wished I could do [Edgar Rice] Burroughs’s Barsoom. So this is pretty much a dream come true for me.”
I love the idea of Chabon taking on “John Carter”, and I bet he’d do an awesome version of Barsoom. But…for many of us, these books were our first introduction to fantasy, sci-fi, and adventure stories. The mind can conceive of more than the screen can show us, no matter who is doing the creating. I want to love this idea, but I’m a little afraid of it, too.
It doesn’t seem to be highlighted up there, but as I recall, John Carter was to be Pixar’s first live action movie. While I’m worried about the campy versus fun ratio, I have high hopes.
I cringe that Hollywood has any interest in this property at all, especially Disney. How true to the source material can we trust this movie to be?