Progress City, U.S.A.

Although unconfirmed, it’s widely believed that Pixar director Andrew Stanton’s next film after WALL-E will be John Carter of Mars. The science-fiction film, based on the series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, has been alternately rumored to be animated, live-action or a hybrid of both. Yet it is not Hollywood’s first attempt to film Burroughs’ tales of Barsoom - several studios have tried and failed over the decades to get a John Carter project off the ground. The first of these attempts was all the way back in the 1930s, and ironically this iteration of the tale was actually intended as an animated serial.

In 1931 Bob Clampett went to work at the Harman-Ising Studios, where the Disney expatriates were producing shorts for Warner Brothers. Here he worked on the early Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts, staying with Warners when Harman and Ising left and Leon Schlesinger took over the animation unit. Working with Friz Freleng and Tex Avery, Clampett would eventually become one of Warners’ legendary animators. Around 1936, however, he had an idea for striking out on his own.

Clampett approached Edgar Rice Burroughs about serializing his Mars novels in animated form. Burroughs, although unfamiliar with the animation world, was enthusiastic about the project and gave it his consent. Clampett worked for about a year on development with Burroughs’ son, John Coleman Burroughs. While still working for Warners, Clampett moonlighted on the John Carter project with assistance from animator Chuck Jones and eventually created a pencil test and demo reel.

Sadly, studio politics were just as wrongheaded then as they are now and executive interference eventually led to the demise of the project. MGM, who held the rights to Burroughs’ properties, didn’t understand the serious, science-fiction tone Clampett was trying to achieve. They instead wanted more slapstick, comical films and wanted Burroughs to adapt his more popular Tarzan character for animation. Eventually Clampett tired of the process and returned to Warners where he signed a new contract to direct.

The project never revived; animated shorts remained the domain of the funny animals and slapstick that had dominated them for years. The closest that Hollywood would come to the aesthetic of Clampett’s John Carter would be the Fleischers’ Superman shorts several years later. Clampett’s project, if realized, might have changed the face of science-fiction and animation forever.

This little history lesson is basically so I can show you this footage - the quite awesome demo that Clampett produced in 1936 to demonstrate his concept:

More information is available in this interesting article by Jim Korkis.

Toy Story 3
2010 - dir. Lee Unkrich

John Lasseter confirmed to Rotten Tomatoes in November 2007 what everyone already knew - Pixar was going to make Toy Story 3. Ironically this is the project that broke the camel’s back when it came to Pixar’s relationship with former Disney head Michael Eisner. Eisner, trying to play hardball during Pixar’s contract renegotiations, maintained that Disney held the rights to all the characters from the Disney-Pixar co-productions and would make Toy Story 3 with our without Pixar. Eisner set up an entirely new internal animation studio, Circle 7, in Glendale to specifically make sequels to Pixar films starting with Toy Story 3.

All this changed with the Disney-Pixar merger in 2006 and the resulting management shakeup; Lasseter shut down Circle 7 and abandoned their work on TS3 (more on this story, and the plot of the abandoned sequel, can be found here). Pixar, who already had a concept of their own for the film, began development under director Lee Unkrich. Unkrich was on the original creative team for Toy Story and co-directed Toy Story 2; he also edited both films. The storyline for the new sequel is still unknown, but it’s targeted for a 2010 release. Based on a treatment by Andrew Stanton, the film will be scripted by writer Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine).

Cast: Tom Hanks (Woody), Tim Allen (Buzz Lightyear)

Crew: Lee Unkrich - Director, Michael Arndt - Screenplay, Randy Newman - Score, Darla Anderson - Producer, John Lasseter - Exec. Producer