Willem Dafoe has been added to the cast of Andrew Stanton’s John Carter of Mars, the adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s A Princess of Mars. He joins Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins, who play John Carter and Dejah Thoris, respectively. Willem Dafoe will play Tars Tarkas, a leader among the villainous Tharks (or green martians). He’s an exception however, in that he can experience love and compassion, which leads him to sympathizing with John Carter’s plight. Given that his character is a four-armed green alien standing ten to twelve feet tall, you won’t actually be seeing Dafoe, although I believe the plan is still to do motion-capture for the martians. This will also mark Dafoe’s second outing with Stanton, as he provided a voice for Finding Nemo.
The novel began its serialization in 1912 and spawned eight other novels and several shorter tales over the following thirty years. A Civil War veteran of the Confederate side, John Carter finds himself taking refuge in a cave after an Indian attack when he is mysteriously transported to Mars. Due to the lower gravity, Carter has superhuman strength on the planet, which helps win him favor when he stumbles across the green martians, a race of four-armed warriors twice the height of humans. When these people capture Dejah Thoris, princess of the humanlike red martians, Carter plots to save her and her people from their oppressors while winning her love along the way. The series is a classic example of sci-fi/fantasy pulp fiction.
Andrew Stanton (WALL-E, Finding Nemo) co-wrote the adaptation with Mark Andrews, one of Pixar’s resident story guys who entered the fold alongside Brad Bird. Michael Chabon also done some revision work. I think I’ve really only seen the two leads in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, in which they were fine but not really given much to work with, but the rest of the talent and my reading of the novel makes me pretty excited for Disney’s new potential franchise, and that’s a first in recent history.
There isn’t a publicly acknowledged release window, but with production targeted to begin early next year, I’d hazard a guess and predict summer 2011.
