Paramount has acquired the rights to Ray Bradbury’s short-story collection The Martian Chronicles. The adaptation will be an ambitious undertaking, as the collection involves inter-connected short stories which tell the tale of humans’ attempt to colonize Mars, much to the dismay of the native Martians living on the planet. Producer John Davis optioned the rights to the book last summer, and now Heat Vision reports that Paramount has come onboard to finance the flick.This isn’t the first time Bradbury’s 1950 book has been adapted: it was turned into an NBC miniseries in 1980 starring Rock Hudson. Then, in 1997, Davis and Steven Spielberg tried to get the project off the ground at Universal. Obviously, that never materialized, and when the rights reverted earlier this year Paramount jumped in. The studio is now looking for a writer to work on the screenplay. Hit the jump to read a synopsis of the book.
Here’s the synopsis for The Martian Chronicles:
From "Rocket Summer" to "The Million-Year Picnic," Ray Bradbury's stories of the colonization of Mars form an eerie mesh of past and future. Written in the 1940s, the chronicles drip with nostalgic atmosphere--shady porches with tinkling pitchers of lemonade, grandfather clocks, chintz-covered sofas. But longing for this comfortable past proves dangerous in every way to Bradbury's characters--the golden-eyed Martians as well as the humans. Starting in the far-flung future of 1999, expedition after expedition leaves Earth to investigate Mars. The Martians guard their mysteries well, but they are decimated by the diseases that arrive with the rockets. Colonists appear, most with ideas no more lofty than starting a hot-dog stand, and with no respect for the culture they've displaced.
Bradbury's quiet exploration of a future that looks so much like the past is sprinkled with lighter material. In "The Silent Towns," the last man on Mars hears the phone ring and ends up on a comical blind date. But in most of these stories, Bradbury holds up a mirror to humanity that reflects a shameful treatment of "the other," yielding, time after time, a harvest of loneliness and isolation. Yet the collection ends with hope for renewal, as a colonist family turns away from the demise of the Earth towards a new future on Mars. Bradbury is a master fantasist and The Martian Chronicles are an unforgettable work of art [Amazon].