Paramount Pictures report they have acquired screen rights to author Ray Bradbury's science fiction fantasy, short story collection "The Martian Chronicles".
Published in 1950, the book chronicles the colonization of Mars by humans fleeing from a troubled and eventually atomically devastated Earth, and the conflict between aboriginal Martians and the new colonists.
"Chronicles" lies somewhere between a short story collection and an episodic novel, containing stories Bradbury originally published in the late 1940's in science fiction pulp magazines.
For publication, the stories were loosely woven together with a series of short, interstitial vignettes.
Similar to author Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" book series, Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles" follows a 'future history' structure, with stories, complete in themselves, coming together as episodes in a larger sequential narrative framework.
The overall structure is in three parts, punctuated by two catastrophes: the near-extinction of the 'Martians' and the parallel near-extinction of the human race.
The new film will be produced by John Davis ("Predator").
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