Corona | Coming Attractions

Two of the cast members from X-Men Origins: Wolverine have landed the leading roles in Disney's live-action John Carter of Mars. Taylor Kitsch, the Friday Night Lights cast member who played the mutant cajun called Gambit in the Wolverine film, will play the shellshocked Civil War soldier that is somehow transported to the red planet and becomes embroiled in their battles between species while Lynn Collins will play Dejah Thoris, the lightly-clothed Martian princess and love interest to Carter.

This marks the first major casting milestone in the project's long and tortured existence in development hell. The movie will be directed by Pixar's Andrew Stanton (WALL-E) and mark his first live-action project. Stanton is also credited with the most recent draft of the screenplay along with Mark Andrews, which is of course based on the 1917 novel by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs.

It was also recently discovered that the movie will lens in Utah early next year, with the southwest landscape probably subbing for the arid wastes of Mars' deserts. But really, what you should take away from today's news is this: finally, after decades of false starts and troubles, we're finally going to get to see Burroughs' Barsoom, its four-armed green men and Carter's epic battles on the big screen.