Mars. Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris, the Princess of Helium. Samantha Morton as Sola, a Thark that works with John Carter. Mark Strong as Matai Shang, the Hekkador of the Therns. Ciarán Hinds as Tardos Mors, the Jeddak of Helium and Dejah Thoris' father. Dominic West as Sab Than, the Jeddak of Zodanga. James Purefoy as Kantos Kan, the Odwar of the ship Xavarian. Bryan Cranston as Colonel Powell, a Union colonel who wants John to help his U.S. cavalry soldiers against the Apache. Daryl Sabara as Ned, John Carter's nephew. Polly Walker as Sarkoja, a merciless Thark who hates Sola. Thomas Haden Church as Tal Hajus, a vicious Thark who dislikes John Carter and Tars Tarkas. Willem Dafoe as Tars Tarkas, the Jeddak of the Tharks and Sola's father. David Schwimmer as a young Thark Warrior, a Thark who informs Tars Tarkas that 18 of the Thark eggs did not hatch. Jon Favreau as the Thark bookmaker, a Thark who collects the bets on any conflict. Don Stark as Dix, a shopkeeper at an Arizona town where John Carter stops. Nicholas Woodeson as Dalton, John Carter's executor who summons Edgar. Art Malik as Zodangan General. Development Origins The film is largely based on A Princess of Mars (1912), the first in a series of 11 Burroughs novels to feature the interplanetary hero John Carter (and in later volumes the adventures of his children with Dejah Thoris). The story was originally serialized in six monthly installments (from February through to July 1912) in the pulp magazine The All-Story; those chapters, originally titled "Under the Moons of Mars", were then collected as a novel and published in hardcover five years later from A. C. McClurg. Bob Clampett involvement In 1931, director Bob Clampett approached Edgar Rice Burroughs with the idea of adapting A Princess of Mars into a feature-length animated film. Burroughs responded enthusiastically, recognizing that a regular live-action feature would face various limitations to adapt accurately, so he advised Clampett to write an original animated adventure for John Carter. Working with Burroughs' son John Coleman Burroughs in 1935, Clampett used rotoscope and other hand-drawn techniques to capture the action, tracing the motions of an athlete who performed John Carter's powerful movements in the reduced Martian gravity, and designed the green-skinned, 4-armed Tharks to give them a believable appearance. He then produced footage of them riding their eight-legged Thoats at a