John Carter: Director talks sequel titles & details during appearance at SDCC

When John Carter was released in 2012, the potential tentpole movie became one of history’s biggest box office bombs. Carrying a staggering budget of $250 million, the film grossed $73 million at the domestic box office and $284.1 million worldwide. Its performance killed any franchise plans, but the movie has garnered a bit of a passionate fan following in the years since its release, and some of them wonder what may have come next if the movie was successful. Our very own Chris Bumbray was in attendance when director Andrew Stanton spoke about the film at San Diego Comic-Con, and he revealed titles for the sequels along with plot details.

The first sequel would’ve been called John Carter: Gods of Mars, and it would’ve found Carter returning after ten years on Mars to find that his wife has a child who was kidnapped and is advanced to adult age and sent to kill his father. The sequel would have ended with Carter reuniting with his wife and man-son.

The next sequel would’ve been called John Carter: Warlord of Mars, and it would have dealt with the overthrow of mars, and Carter would have been killed. He would wake up on earth again and return to mars and save the planet, being named “warlord of mars” by the film’s conclusion.

John Carter is based on “A Princess of Mars,” the first book in the “Barsoom” series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The movie focuses on the first interplanetary adventure of the titular character as he attempts to mediate civil unrest amongst the warring kingdoms of Barsoom. The movie stars Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Samantha Morton, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds, Dominic West, James Purefoy, and Willem Dafoe.

Getting a film made goes back to the 1930s, and most of those efforts languished in development hell. Disney made a concentrated effort in the late-2000s to adapt the project into a feature film after they abandoned one of their chances to do so in the 1980s. Stanton made his live-action directorial debut on John Carter after directing the Pixar animated films Finding Nemo and WALL-E. As previously noted, the film ultimately bombed at the box office, which was mostly blamed on the movie’s marketing campaign. The words “Princess” and “Mars” were removed from the title, which alienated fans of the source material, and the trailers were also scarce on information about the film’s overall plot and narrative.

The great thing about 2022 is that we’re living in the age of streaming, and Disney+ has become a viable release destination for certain projects. Tim Miller (Deadpool), who was also on the panel, joked that there’s “a lot of plot, let’s do it as a streaming series,” and I think that idea isn’t too far-fetched. If done well, the series could go over well with fans and do what the film simply couldn’t. Stanton, as a joke, added they could “(Zack)Snyder it and shoot it in 4:3″, but all kidding aside, this could actually work.

Do YOU think John Carter sequels would work well as a potential streaming series? Do YOU want to see this story continue?