Paramount has picked up the film rights to Ray Bradbury’s seminal science-fiction short story collection The Martian Chronicles. The stories contain no real recurring characters but are instead linked as a future history telling the tale of a future colonization of mars and the resistance of the planet’s indigenous inhabitants.
I have to admit that I am intrigued by Paramount’s acquisition. Recently the studio ditched their long in-development adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic novel Dune. It’s looking like they want to stay in the literary science-fiction business, though.
But adappting a series of short stories that are only thinly linked can be tricky. The Martian Chronicles was adapted into a three-part miniseries with Rock Hudson headlining the cast in 1979 for NBC and although I last watched in college about 20 years ago, I recall it to be fairly boring. It’s an assessment that Bradbury shared evidently.
Further troubling news is that the only person so far attached to the film is producer John Davis, whose credits include the recent Gulliver’s Travels, Marmaduke and Predators. Suffice it to say that I don’t have much confidence in the project right now.
Via Hollywood Reporter.
