James Cameron has a red planet on his mind. In the next 18 months, he'll produce a TV miniseries and an IMAX film, both depicting the first small steps humankind takes on Mars.
In a speech given earlier this month at the second annual International Mars Society conference in Boulder, CO, the Hollywood heavyweight and self-confessed "Mars wacko" called the journey to other planets "the greatest dream" of his own boyhood science fantasies. To help that dream come true as soon as possible, he vowed to dedicate his production company, Lightstorm Productions, to showing a mission to Mars as "a fantasy (the viewing public) can achieve not some day, but soon -- in the tangible near future of years rather than decades."
Cameron's two upcoming Mars projects are part of that goal. The first, a five-hour miniseries, may be the adaptation of Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars Trilogy" -- Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars -- that fans have looked forward to since Cameron picked up the rights to the books early last year, but the director seemed to indicate that it will actually be an entirely separate project.
"The miniseries is gonna be written by me and Al Reinert, who was the co-writer of 'Apollo 13,' and it's gonna be directed by Martha Coolidge and I'm producing it," he said.
However, Cameron will direct the IMAX 3-D film himself, co-writing the screenplay with Robert Zubrin and veteran IMAX producer Gary Goddard, who worked with Cameron on the 3-D Terminator film "T2: Battle Across Time." He will also co-write a novel based on the same material with Charles Pellegrino, noted author of nonfiction books about the space program and other voyages of discovery.
All the projects will be closely integrated, Cameron said.
"The idea is that that in order to maximize the production value, we're gonna be using the same props in the sets and many of the same visual effects in both films," he said. "And this allows us to build more and better stuff on both (productions) and show more, given that the budgets of TV miniseries and IMAX films tend to be quite limited compared to the kind of big theatrical features that I've done. So both films will show the same basic mission architecture, even though they're going to have different scripts and different characters."
With that in mind, Cameron shared the basics of the mission architecture both the IMAX film and the miniseries will share, teasing his Mars-hungry audience with numerous design sketches of the vehicles that the films will bring to life.
"Two uncrewed vehicles -- a cargo lander and an Earth-return vehicle (ERV) -- being sent to Mars in 2012. And a crewed lander being sent in 2014. The ERV consisted of fuel trans-Earth injection stage at a return hab. And an aero-captures(?) into Mars orbit. The cargo lander comes down with an unfueled ascent stage. It deploys a tiny mobile nuclear reaction -- a putt-putt nuke -- and starts making methane and oxygen out of Martian atmosphere and C02. This is all pretty familiar stuff."
As to the plot connecting the two projects, Cameron said "actually it is a love story, but it's not 'Titanic.' You know, the passion that I want the audience to understand is the force that drives smart, sane people out into the void for years at a time, risking their health, maybe even their lives, on a quest which is at once scientific and spiritual."
Both films are scheduled for 2001 release.
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