Now this is a long time coming, and a point of personal jealousy for myself. Why don’t they let me make this one?! Paramount has bought the rights to Ray Bradbury‘s 1950 short story collection The Martian Chronicles. The 28 separate stories are loosely woven together, the combined product of many separate tales Bradbury had published in various sci-fi magazines in the late 1940s. The overrunning theme is humans attempting to live on the red planet, and was even made into a mini-series in 1980 starring Rock Hudson, Bernadette Peters, Darren McGavin and Roddy McDowall, but never a feature.
The first short story, “Rocket Summer,” actually concerns Earth, telling of Ohio’s winter blossoming to summer for a brief time thanks to a rocket’s takeoff into space. Perhaps one of the more famous stories is “The Earth Men,” which tells of the Second Expedition to Mars. The cosmonauts are met with little-to-know notice of any kind. Until a “House of Usher”-esque turn of events takes place. Edgar Allan Poe’s short story is a large inspiration for the collection as a whole, as a matter of fact.
For a very general sequence of Martian events, read THR‘s little summary:
In three structures, the stories dealt with attempts to settle Mars and the Martians’ efforts to fight the humans off, the colonization of the red planet and a nuclear war that eventually forces most of the humans to return to Earth. In the aftermath of the war, humans become the new Martians.
Universal had the rights back in 1997, and were prepping a version for Steven Spielberg. The rights finally lapped this year and Paramount stepped in. John Davis (Predators, Gulliver’s Travels) is producing.
Have you read The Martian Chronicles? A Bradbury fan?