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.

View the image larger

The below article appeared over at Yahoo.com.

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."