Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles Could Be The Next Avatar
In a summer where Fox’s two biggest releases were A-Team and Knight and Day, it’s easy to see why they might be scrambling to find the next Avatar. They need to release something that people might actually want to see. Fingers crossed for Predators, but in the meantime the studio is looking for ways to cash-in on the sudden audience interest in alien planets. One of the ways they may do that, is by turning Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles into a movie.
The LA Times says producer John Davis, who was behind Alien vs. Predator and I, Robot for Fox, has optioned the rights to Bradbury’s books. Originally published by Bradbury in the 1950s as a series of short stories, it chronicles the efforts of humans to colonize Mars over a period of several years while clashing with natives and watching distant Earth crumble and destroy itself. Though the collection is regarded as a science fiction classic, it’s never really been properly attempted as a movie. It has, however, been done in many different forms on television, including a 1980 miniseries and even a cartoon. There’s a reason for that. Television is really all its suited for.
Since this is a collection of shorts, it’s episodic in nature. Each story focuses on different characters, in different places, doing different things. To turn it into a movie that will have to be altered, drastically, unless Fox intends to make each story into its own separate movie. I doubt that’s their intention, most of them simply aren’t thick enough to make a movie out of on their own.
