SPY KIDS director Robert Rodriguez has signed on to helm a feature version of Edgar Rice Burroughs' sci-fi classic, A PRINCESS OF MARS, for Paramount Pictures, reported VARIETY. The film will be produced by Alphaville Prods. and Rodriguez's Troublemaker Studios. Alphaville's Sean Daniel and Jim Jacks, along with Rodriguez Troublemaker's Elizabeth Avellan, will produce the project, which is set to begin production early next year. The film will be based on the first book in the 11-novel JOHN CARTER OF MARS series. THE CELL screenwriter Mark Protosevich is penning the script.

Rodriguez plans to begin pre-production as he shoots Dimension Films' SIN CITY. He hopes the $100 million plus film will help expand Troublemaker like LORD OF THE RINGS did for Peter Jackson's Weta Digital.

A PRINCESS OF MARS follows American Civil War veteran John Carter after a mysterious cave transports him to the planet of Barsoom, which he mistakes as Mars, where he must battle 12-foot-tall green men. Burroughs, who is best known for writing TARZAN OF THE APES, first published the novel in 1912.