John Carter 2: other studios interested?

According to a "well-informed source" of John Sagar, responsible for the Facebook page "The Fantastic World of Edgar Rice Burroughs", ERB Incorporated would like to know now if Disney can make a final decision regarding the future of John Carter. If they answer a definitive "no" to the sequels, then ERB inc would ask them to relinquish what's left of their option (8 months until March of 2015). It seems like many parties would be interested for making a sequel if Disney let go.

All this is of course to be taken with a grain of salt. For once, I can imagine that nothing can force Disney to give up their option on the franchise before the set date, which would therefore help a rival studio. Then even if another studio anvision the follow-up, would Andrew Stanton be interested at all? He has only worked as of now for Disney and Pixar, and has a privileged position at Pixar, being Number 2. Another question, what about the elements added to the plot in the Disney movie? Would another studio be able to use them, as for example the Thern medallion, which is pivotal for the first movie's story?

In short, at least there's some move on the John Carter sequel front, and it's comforting to know that there would be other parties interested to continue the adventure. Of course, we're all waiting for an official announcement which perhaps won't happen anytime soon. And there's THE catastrophy scenario: Disney could renew the rights as they could do, but without planning to do anything with them, just sitting on them to prevent another studio from gaining benefits from them. After all, they did it for years before Paramount got the rights for a while. To be continued!

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Scott Dutton's prophetic fan poster?