The celebrated director behind such Pixar animated classics asA Bug’s Life,WALL-E, and the Oscar-winningFinding Nemo, Andrew Stanton, has now found his next feature. Stanton is currently in talks to helm a movie entitledChairman Spacemanfor Searchlight Pictures and Simon Kinberg’s Genre Films.
The movie will be based on a New Yorker fiction story written by Thomas Pierce which first appeared back in 2017,Chairman Spacemantells the tale of “an infamous corporate raider who renounces his worldly wealth to become an interplanetary missionary”. Pierce himself will be adapting his own short story for the movie treatment, withThe MartianandLoganproducer Simon Kinberg set to produce alongside Genre Films' Audrey Chon.
The short story on whichChairman Spacemanwill be based on is about a man named Dom Whipple, a “notorious corporate raider, the scourge of boardrooms near and far,” who has joined a church, renounced his worldly wealth, and signed up as an interplanetary missionary who is going to “spread the message of God’s love tounexplored solar systems”. It sounds like an interesting project for Stanton to take on and will mark the director’s second live-action feature film following 2012’s science-fiction actionerJohn Carter.
That particular live-action effort became infamous rather quickly due to the sheer amount of money that was lost at thebox office. Although the movie grossed nearly $300 million worldwide, it lost a considerable amount of money due to its budgetary and marketing costs. The movie finds the titular John Carter being transported to Mars, where he learns about his superhuman capabilities. Things take a turn when he rescues a princess who is on the run. The movie is based on 1917’sA Princess of Mars, the first book in the Barsoom series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs. SinceJohn Carterwas release, it hasgained something of a cult following, with audiences liking the movie a lot more than critics. Sadly, it is now destined to be remembered as one of Disney’s biggest box office bombs.
In the time sinceJohn Carter, Stanton has worked in live-action elsewhere beyond the big screen, having stepped behind the camera fortelevision shows such as Legion,Tales from the Loop,Better Call Saul, and Netflix’s much-lovedStranger Things.
Andrew Stantonhas previously discussed the surprising similarities between working on animation and live-action, saying “People think that when you work on an animated film, it’s as if [you’re] talking to a bunch of computers [your] whole life. I actually talk to 200 people every day, 200 people that have different jobs, like how to do the lighting, the camera, the costume work. So it’s very similar, actually, in live-action. I’m talking to people that do the camera, the costumes, the actors, and it’s just that you’re doing it outside instead of inside.”
In terms of his highly successful career in animation, Stanton also wrote the screenplays for Pixar highlightsToy Story,Monsters Inc.,Toy Story 2, andToy Story 4. It is unclear when filming onChairman Spacemanwill be able to begin, but it is certainly one to add to your “must-see” list. This comes to us fromThe Hollywood Reporter.
