John Carter Movie Concept Art and Stanton Speaks

After a good year of nothing we now get the goodies! Following up yesterday's poster release, the Los Angeles Times' HeroComplex blog scored an exclusive interview with John Carter director Andrew Stanton and the unveiling of two pieces of concept artworkhttp://herocomplex.latimes.com/2011/06/16/john-carter-andrew-stanton-on-martian-history-comic-con-and-monty-python/ . I won't post the entire interview but here is some snippets that caught my attention.

On where the film is now: "We’ve cut the movie together and started the whole visual effects animation process last summer and then we did a month of re-shoots in L.A. in April, and now it’s just a race to get it all done in time. "

On his approach to adapting Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel: " I was able to recognize the fact that [the book] was not as solid in the material as I had remembered. At the same time I put a lot of value on the fact that I had remembered it and that I couldn't ever stop thinking about it. The bones of it were strong, the sediment, the soil of it, was really fertile and ready to have built from it."

On the look and design: "I looked at things like Apocaplyto and Rome and even things like Shogun and Lawrence of Arabia, things that as a viewer I could accept as having a level of historical research."

And on the lack of a Comic-Con presentation: "I know some people will read that as a sign that we’re unsure of our property. It’s just the opposite. We want to control how and what is being seen and the way it is presented."