LA Times: John Carter Director Andrew Stanton “Refuses to underestimate the audience’s intelligence”
“John Carter” director Andrew Stanton was motivated to make the Disney adventure film, which hits theaters March 9, out of “selfish fan desire,” he told a packed theater after an early screening of the film earlier this week.
Stanton, best known for directing the acclaimed and popular Pixar films “Finding Nemo” and “Wall-E,” spoke during a Q&A after a free IMAX screening Monday hosted by Hero Complex’s Geoff Boucher, describing how he came to love the franchise through the John Carter Marvel comics, which led him to the original novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
“This idea of seeing this movie on the screen, I’ve had for 36 years — not as a filmmaker, but as a fan. The year I read it was the same year, later, I saw ‘Star Wars,’ and then I saw ‘Close Encounters,’ and then I saw ‘Alien,’ and I thought it was some invisible promise that meant this book was going to go on the screen next. And I just stood there, waiting, ready to be first in line, and three decades went by, and I just started to get really frustrated that it was never going to get made. And that’s all I ever wanted in my whole life was to see it before I passed from this earth, you know? … It’s purely out of fan desire, selfish fan desire, that I did this risky thing.”