Fans have waited a long time for "John Carter of Mars" to make its way to the big screen, and they're going to have to wait a little bit longer. The film, based on the series of Edgar Rice Burroughs novels about a Civil War veteran who becomes a great hero on Mars, isn't due until March 2012, so it's going to take some time.
But there are some lucky individuals who are experiencing "John Carter" every single day, like director Andrew Stanton. MTV's Josh Horowitz recently spoke with Stanton about the film's progress, and the director told us that while shooting technically wrapped some time ago, the hard work is far from over.
"I'm not in post-production — I'm in digital principal photography now, which goes on for the rest of 2011, so I'm only halfway through the movie," he explained, indicating that there's a fair amount of effects-heavy work that's still to be accomplished.
So, what are some of those effects going to look like? Stanton kept his lips zipped in terms of the aesthetic of "Carter," though he gave an enticing tease: "I didn't try to make it look like anything else. I really tried to make it its own thing. I tried to make a very historically accurate Martian film if that makes sense, so I'll let you decipher that."
"Carter" was an interesting shoot for Stanton for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that this was the "WALL-E" director's first foray into live-action filmmaking.
"When you've made animated movies your whole life, it was pretty exciting to be outside for a day, let alone for months," said Stanton, a fixture at Pixar. "For as cold and as hot and as hard as it was, which I knew it would be, I was up for it and it was a blast. It was the hardest thing I'll ever have done, but man, it was a great adventure. It was like sailing across the ocean, you know, everything that goes with that."
Stanton, who said that "Carter" is still slated for a 3-D release as far as he's aware, also weighed in on the man responsible for bringing the titular hero to life, Taylor Kitsch. "Hopefully he'll be another great face on the big screen, and hopefully he'll be John Carter to people and nobody else if we've done it right," he said of his leading man.
Tell us what you think of the "John Carter of Mars" update in the comments section and on Twitter!
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