First
Publicity Image
With only FIVE months to go until
the movie MISSION TO MARS, M2M, is released, the first publicity
image has been released. The image probably depicts the first, ill-fated,
Mission to Mars at the flag planting ceremony. You'll notice the
Mars Lander directly behind the
two astronauts planting the flag.
The below article appeared over
at Yahoo.com. Thanks goes to the Patterson over at the Val
Kilmer Newsletter for the tip.
Hollywood Renews Love Affair With Mars
By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The last time the
Red Planet loomed large on the big screen -- during the 1950s and
1960s -- it was the Martians who typically visited Earth. This time
around, Earthlings are venturing to Mars.
Decades after little green men menaced Earth
in such movies as "The War of the Worlds," "Invaders
from Mars" and "Mars Needs Women," Hollywood is conjuring
up at least three new films and a TV mini-series that envision the
first human expedition to Mars.
The Walt Disney Co. plans a release next
March of "Mission to Mars," which director Brian De Palma
("Blow Out," "Mission: Impossible") is shooting
in Vancouver. Antony Hoffman is making his feature film debut "Red
Planet" (Warner Bros.), which is filming in Australia and Jordan
and is due out by next summer.
And James Cameron, who won a raft of Oscars
for the blockbuster "Titanic," is producing and co-writing
two Martian adventures -- a 3-D film for Imax and a five-part mini-series
for the Fox TV network -- both planned for the spring of 2001.
The flurry of Mars-themed movies comes amid
renewed public and scientific interest in the Red Planet generated
by NASA's unmanned Pathfinder mission two years ago and the Mars
Polar Lander's arrival this December. The crash of the Mars Climate
Orbiter on the Martian surface made headlines last month.
Aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin, author
of the bestseller "The Case of Mars; The plan to Settle the
Red Planet and Why We Must," is a co-producer with Cameron
for the Imax film and a consultant on the Disney project. He says
Mars has long captured the popular imagination because of its relative
nearness and some similarity to Earth.
MARS: A GOOD PLACE TO LIVE?
"It is the planet, other than Earth,
... where life has the best chance," said Zubrin, founder of
the Mars Society, a group advocating manned exploration. "It's
got water, it's got carbon, it's got nitrogen. The temperatures
on Mars are cold, but they're not too cold. It's far away and not
too far away. We can get there in six months. That's how long it
took explorers to get to Australia in the 1800s."
The day Pathfinder landed on Mars in 1997,
there were 100 million hits on NASA's Web site for the mission,
he said.
"It's nothing new," said Donald
Reed, founder and president of the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy
and Horror Films. "Mars is out there. Someday we're going to
be on it."
Indeed, Cameron, a proponent of human space
exploration, sees his film and mini-series as a chance to build
greater public support for NASA funding and a manned mission to
Mars.
"I want to make humans-to-Mars real
in the minds of the viewing public," he told the Mars Society
in August. "I want to show it as a fantasy they can achieve,
not 'someday,' but soon, in a tangible near future of years rather
than decades."
But, rather than building plots around fantastic
encounters with aliens, the makers of all four new projects are
striving for fact-based fiction focusing on the challenge manned
exploration of Mars poses for science and the human condition.
Stranded On Mars
"Mission to Mars," which Zubrin
says has NASA's stamp of approval, stars Tim Robbins, Gary Sinise,
Kim Delaney and Don Cheadle in a story about astronauts sent on
a rescue mission after members of the first expedition to Mars are
stranded.
While the film attempts a scientifically
credible depiction of space exploration, elements of the story are
speculative.
"The Disney movie tries to be as realistic
as it can be in the context of an adventure where one goes out into
the universe and discovers fantastic things that one had never expected
before," Zubrin said. In that way, he added, the story emulates
the 1968 sci-fi classic "2001: A Space Odyssey." (TOLD
YOU SO Bert)
"Red Planet" also uses the premise
of man's first mission to Mars going awry, with one astronaut (Carrie-Anne
Moss) forced to decide whether to attempt a death-defying rescue
of a stranded crew member (Val Kilmer) or obey orders and return
to Earth without him. The film also stars Benjamin Bratt, Tom Sizemore
and Terence Stamp.
Hoffman, the director, told the Los Angeles
Times that while he intends to make the movie technically realistic,
he ultimately lost NASA's support because of a storyline in which
one astronaut kills another.
"The system breaks down," Hoffman
was quoted as saying. "They (NASA) didn't want that. And while
I really wanted NASA's approval, I said, 'It's more important dramatically
to get what I need than it is to get the little logos on the ships."'
The Disney and Warner Bros. films reportedly
are budgeted for $75 million to $80 million each. The makers of
both have tapped the expertise of NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasadena, California.
Cameron, a technophile who prides himself
on his attention to detail, has said he plans to bring "documentary
accuracy" to his Imax film and the Fox mini-series.
While the scripts will differ, the movies
will share props and sets to maximize production value. Both will
chronicle an imaginary but realistic 500-day mission to the Martian
surface, capped by the discovery of living bacteria, Cameron said.
"The challenge, and the attraction,
of these films is to be able to project ourselves into the living
experience of the first Mars landing team. We want to make it experientially
real."
Red the Press
Release for the Movie RED PLANET
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