After the disappointing returns of John Carter, Disney has let its rights to the source material expire and returned the property to Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., which isn’t about to let something like a massive flop get in the way of trying to immediately do the same thing again. (This isn’t terribly surprising, given that it’s a company dedicated solely to wringing profits from an author who’s been dead for 64 years.) Not content to let Disney be the only one forced to take a $200 million write-down, the estate is offering some other lucky studio the chance be the next in line, and audiences another opportunity to see a guy leap comically large distances on Mars.
“We will be seeking a new partner to help develop new adventures on film as chronicled in the eleven Mars novels Burroughs wrote. This adventure never stops,” threatened company president James Sullos, refusing to notice that the adventure, in fact, does seem to have stopped, at least temporarily. Still, promised royalties from the upcoming Tarzan movie aren’t enough to sate that hunger for adventure.
No word yet on whether the company is pushing for a full John Carter reboot or a sequel based on a different book. But hopefully it’s the latter, because The Chessmen Of Mars, the fifth book in the series, would be a fun name for a movie audiences can ignore three years from now.