The future is looking very strange for Pixar - all fleshy and with regular sized eyes. The studio, whose animations kick the less well-rendered arse of every other 'toon house's output, are dipping a large toe in live action.
Pixar already has Brad Bird's 1906, a live-action telling of the San Francisco earthquake of the same year. But the studio has now announced that it plans to make a trilogy of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars.
The creative team of Andrew Stanton (Director), Mark Andrews (Screenwriter) and Jim Morris (Producer) made the announcement while on a research trip to Burroughs' archive. They didn't confirm what shape the trilogy might take, but said the first would likely appear before 2012.
Various people have been trying to bring John Carter to the screen. The John Carter saga was first published in 1917, with Princess of Mars, and told of a Civil War veteran who travelled to the red planet and found a race of huge barbaric green creatures, who know Mars as Barsoom. Ray Harryhausen once wanted to adapt it and recently Robert Rodriguez had a bash. Then Jon Favreau came very close to realising it at Paramount, until it proved very expensive and the option expired and he went on to make Iron Man. But, who better to finally bring it to screens than Pixar?