Officially Cool: Phil Saunders’ John Carter of Mars, Superman Concept Art

Posted by Neil Miller (neil@filmschoolrejects.com) on February 27, 2009

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This may or may not be new to all of you, but as of this morning when reader Christopher M. sent it over it was new to me — so it wins the Officially Cool stamp of approval. It is a slew of additional concept drawings for John Carter of Mars by Phil Saunders, whose credits include being an illustrator on Iron Man, Spider-Man 3 and Zathura. They were posted over on Saunders’ personal blog the other day and they are certainly worth checking out.

John Carter of Mars is currently under the careful eye of WALL-E directed Andrew Stanton and is being developed by Stanton and friends over at Pixar as a half animation, half live-action adventure. It tells the story of Civil War vet John Carter, who is transplanted to Mars, where he discovers a lush, wildly diverse planet whose main inhabitants are 12-foot tall green barbarians. Finding himself a prisoner of these creatures, he escapes, only to encounter Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, who is in desperate need of a savior.

Check out the John Carter concept art below.

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As an added bonus, Saunders also posted some concept art for the Brett Ratner directed, J.J. Abrams written Superman movie that never was. As Saunders explains, “This is about as un-dynamic a composition as you can come up with, but Production Designer Owen Patterson wanted a straight one-point perspective view of Superman facing off against the Rouser (a Japa… er, Kryptonian Battle Pod, don’t ask) so you could compare scale. I had fun designing the Rouser, though.”

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Check out more of Saunders’ awesome work over at Phil Saunders’ Random Stuff.


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  • Yes indeedy!
  • the only thing I'm afraid of is that Pixar is going to make the creatures and aliens stylized and goofy looking...instead of something like the environment planned for planet Pandora in Avatar...also can Pixar and Stanton pull off a more adult themed feature?...these images are from Jon Faverau was still attached to direct so it's really unknown if the Pixar artists will use this amazing artwork...
  • the only thing I'm afraid of is that Pixar is going to make the creatures and aliens stylized and goofy looking...instead of something like the environment planned for planet Pandora in Avatar...also can Pixar and Stanton pull off a more adult themed feature?...these images are from when Jon Faverau was still attached to direct so it's really unknown if the Pixar artists will use this amazing artwork...
  • It's with Disney now, not Pixar. It'll be live action and PG13 like the Pirates movies and according to Stanton a very 'real, sort of National Geographic" look.

    A lot of the artists from Favreau's team are on the Stanton team now.
  • PLEASE GOD NO!!!
  • They have to realize that if they try and make this a famly film or cut out the main elements that add to what made JCWoM a book that captured the imagination of millions it won't work. After all Edger Rice Burroughs was someone one writing at what then was a new century. At that time societies morals were even more strict than they are today and his books dealt with issues such as warfare, racial tensions, sexuality and public nudity and no one batted an eye. To strip any of these elements from the script will only insure its place in film history mediocrity. After all we have enough bad movies lining the shelves.

    Beautiful Artwork by the way. Not the way I pictured the cities or animals but I grew up with Frazetta as the artists of the Barsoom novels.
  • I have read the Barsoom series over and over since I was a kid. If Disney does it and turns it PG13 it is going to suck golf balls.
  • Big Al
    They look derivative of Star Wars (ship flying out of Geonosis), cityscapes resemble Cruscant, battle scenes out of Lord of the Rings. No originality. Will be a death knell to this.
  • Big Al
    Coruscant (typo)
  • Jeff
    You want it R rated ? Death knell.

    "They look derivative of Star Wars" - I guess some of you didn't catch that these images are from Favreau's unfilmed version.
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