The folks over at ComingSoon have their account of visiting the set of next month’s “John Carter,” the Disney-backed re-imagining of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ classic pulp tales:

Here’s the nut graf:

“Plans for a feature film version go back almost as far as the character himself, but the elaborate fantasy of Barsoom has always been a challenge to bring to life. It wasn’t until an Oscar after-party in 2004 (the night Finding Nemo won “Best Animated Feature”) that Stanton realized he might wind up even tangentially involved in the project’s production.

“I bumped into Robert Rodriguez and he was about to do it,” Stanton recalls. “I was seething with jealousy, not that I thought I’d be able to do it, but just that someone was going to do it. As a fan and because I knew him I said, in the most loving way, ‘Don’t f–k it up! Don’t screw it up! I just really, really want to see it done right.’ He said, ‘Oh, no, no, no!’ I said, ‘Here’s how I would open it! You can have it!’ He said, ‘Lay it on me! Lay it on me!’ I pretty much thought, ‘Okay, it’s finally going to make it to the screen!’ Then he had a falling out with the DGA in the middle of making ‘Sin City’ and it just kind of fell apart. Then it went to Kerry Conran, who did ‘Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.’ I was always following from afar as a fan going, ‘Is it going to make it?'”

Read the full story here.