NEW Pics from Disney’s JOHN CARTER Feature a Giant White Ape & Tars Tarkas


Back in July, we brought you the first trailer for director Andrew Stanton‘s forthcoming film John Carter. Then in September, we brought you some very cool concept art for the forthcoming Walt Disney Pictures big-screen adaptation of the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, John Carter of Mars.

Now, EW has premiered a brand new image from the movie, featuring Taylor Kitsch (Battleship) as the titular hero facing off against a beastly white ape. Check it out below!

[Click Image to Blow Sh!t Up to Martian Proportions]

Stanton also revealed some details about the beast and the differences between the movie and book versions of the creature:

“No, they’re sort of an oversized gorilla in the books, and they’re kind of ubiquitous. They’re littered everywhere through at least the first several novels. They were always cool, just from a visceral standpoint, [but] they don’t really have a narrative function in the first book. So what we did is we made the White Apes a formidable creature that you kind of hear about throughout the movie, but you never really witness. There’s a subtle sense of anticipation for what these things might be like. Then Michael Kutsche — who did a lot of the designs on [the Johnny Depp movie] Alice in Wonderland – came up with this design on his own, for just their scale. He made them nocturnal, almost like moles — they stopped using their eyes, and just had a heightened sense of smell. We just love that. We needed a scene where Carter was going have to get out of his execution sentence in order to move the story forward, and we thought what better than having to go up against this formidable creature?”

In addition to the image above, more have been released. The images below feature Taylor Kitsch as the titular hero John Carter, Lynn Collins as the Martian princess Dejah Thoris, Tars Tarkas who is voiced by Willem Dafoe and Woola the dog-like pet Calot of John Carter.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rf55GTEZ_E[/youtube]

Synopsis:

From Academy Award(R)-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton comes “John Carter”–a sweeping action-adventure set on the mysterious and exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars). “John Carter” is based on a classic novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose highly imaginative adventures served as inspiration for many filmmakers, both past and present. The film tells the story of war-weary, former military captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is inexplicably transported to Mars where he becomes reluctantly embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the captivating Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins). In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter rediscovers his humanity when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands.

John Carter, directed by Andrew Stanton starring Taylor Kitsch (The Bang Bang Club), Mark Strong (Green Lantern), Willem Dafoe (Miral), Lynn Collins (Drift) and Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) is slated to hit theaters on March 9th, 2012.

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Jason Moore
Written by Jason Moore

is a member of the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films and the Founder/Editor In Chief of SciFi Mafia®