MTV: Andrew Stanton initially “bristled” at the title change from John Carter of Mars to simply “John Carter
After decades in development limbo, the hero of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel, “John Carter of Mars,” will finally find his way onto the big screen with the guidance of director Andrew Stanton. But when he gets there, he’ll have dropped the “of Mars.”
After a rather controversial title change, the classic title “John Carter of Mars” became the shortened and genre-neutral “John Carter.”
For fans of the original Burroughs novels, this came as a move away from the beloved source materials, and Stanton admitted to MTV News’ Josh Horowitz that the change concerned him initially as well. “At first, I bristled, to be really honest. You can’t control people’s first impressions as much as you’d like,” he said. “There are just a lot of people that assume that it’s this weird astronaut/ space thing when you have ‘Mars’ in the title.”