Three years after the box-office fiasco of “John Carter,” the licensing company that owns the namesake character is looking for a studio to revive the fortunes of the 103-year-old interstellar adventurer. Edgar Rice Burroughs, the same writer who invented Tarzan, created Carter in 1912 as a Civil War veteran who travels to Mars. Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., or ERB, the private company in Tarzana still owned by descendants of the author, says Hollywood studios are still interested in Carter, despite the poor showing of the Walt Disney Co. movie in 2012 that lost $200 million. Jim Sullos, a retired accountant who serves as president of ERB, said 2016 should be a good year for the Burroughs stable of characters. Next summer, Warner Bros. Entertainment will release a new “Tarzan” movie with Alexander Skarsgard and Samuel L. Jackson. An animated series “Tarzan and Jane” will begin streaming on Netflix in fall of 2016, and there are plans for reprinting comic strips of Tarzan and launching a John Carter role-playing game. “It speaks to Edgar Rice Burroughs genius – he created heroic figures that can survive throughout the century,” Sullos said. Sullos would not disclose names, but said there is interest in the John Carter property from Hollywood majors and smaller production companies. However, given the recent memory of the Disney film, producers are shying away from another feature film. “There may be more interest in a television series than a sequel to the film,” Sullos said, adding that both live-action and animated rights are on the market. Scott Tracy Griffin, author of a centennial book on Tarzan and a longtime fan of Burroughs’ work, said the Mars of the John Carter book series is a fascinating world, and approaching it in another format than a big-screen blockbuster could work better to draw audiences. In the story, Carter is seemingly killed in a cave on Earth but through astral projection is transported to Mars, where he encounters mythical monsters and hostile humanoids, but manages to rise to become a warlord. “(Burroughs) is a world builder of an ecosystem of characters and culture,” he noted. “It is a rich world and there is a lot to explore.” Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst in the Sherman Oaks office of entertainment data firm Rentrak, thinks a new direction for John Carter, combined with lessons from what went wrong at Disney, could lead to success for ERB and the character. But in Hollywood, it’s easy to let one money-losing project poison a property’s prospects. “You don’t want to kill the incentive to find a way to shape these characters and get that in front of an audience,” he added. No respect Whereas Tarzan has been featured in numerous films, TV shows and comic strips over the years, John Carter never commanded the same respect from audiences or studios. But Sullos maintains the cultural influence of John Carter and what’s known as the “Barsoom” series (named after what the inhabitants call Mars) cannot be overstated. Burroughs all but created the format of a romantic adventure with a sci-fi twist that would be repeated in such modern successes as “Superman,” “Star Wars” and “Avatar.” “It was a seminal source for these other blockbusters,” said Sullos, who works from an office in a house Burroughs had built in 1927 on what was then a sprawling 550-acre ranch that later became the community of Tarzana. Bringing the space-traveling John Carter and the Barsoom series to the big screen dates back to the 1930s, when an animated version was pitched to Burroughs. Disney was interested as early as the 1950s but didn’t secure the rights for 30 more years. A project was never produced and the rights ended up at Paramount by the early 2000s. After Paramount declined to renew its option in 2006, Disney picked up the rights a second time and production began in 2010 with Andrew Stanton as director. “John Carter” reportedly carried a hefty budget of $250 million. The film grossed $30 million on its opening weekend, leading to a total $73 million domestic gross during its 16-week release. The film did better internationally, bringing in $211 million for a total global box-office take of $284 million. In its second-quarter 2012 filing, Disney took a $200 million write-down on the film. “If we had the same box-office success in the U.S. as we did internationally, we would look at it in a new light,” Sullos said. He believes the film’s marketing was misguided, starting with a title that didn’t communicate a sense of adventure or the Martian angle. “If you are going to use just a name, that means the context of the film is missing in the advertising,” Sullos said. Dergarabedian at Rentrak agrees. In addition to the weak title, there was also the factor of John Carter being an unknown name except among Burroughs aficionados, he said. “There is a reticence in sci-fi for audiences to latch on to something new or a character they have not heard of before,” Dergarabedian said. King of apes As he works on bringing back John Carter, Sullos awaits the next incarnations of Tarzan, who in Burroughs’ telling is raised by apes in Africa after the death of his parents, Lord and Lady Greystroke. The character first appeared in magazines in 1912 and then in novels two years later. Burroughs published 22 books with the character before the author’s death in 1950. Films with Tarzan began in 1918 and two decades later saw the most famous of the adapted works, featuring former Olympian Johnny Weissmuller. There were also radio series in the 1930s and 1950s and live-action and animated TV shows between the mid-1960s and 2003. Warner Bros. released the last major big-budget live-action film version in 1984. An animated “Tarzan” from Disney in 1999 earned more than $400 million in global box office. It spawned a Broadway musical that premiered in 2006 and played more than 400 performances. As a licensor, ERB gives approval to film and television scripts to make sure they adhere to its standards of positively promoting and preserving the characters. The company does not get involved in casting, shaping storylines or the filming itself, Sullos said. ERB makes money by collecting a licensing fee whenever the option for a film or television show is exercised at the start of production, as well as royalties from whatever revenue the films or shows generate. With merchandising and publishing, ERB takes an advance against future royalties. Sullos would not disclose the company’s revenue. Warner Bros.’ Tarzan film coming next summer was shot last year in England with exterior shooting in Africa. While Sullos has read the script in order to give approval, he remains mum on the storyline. Author Griffin said the Tarzan character remains relevant because he represents freedom, rules his world and makes his own decisions. “He is the supreme authority in his own life,” he said. Re-imagining the Tarzan franchise has to be done the right way to bring in younger audiences that might not be as familiar with the character, Dergarabedian said. A good sign is those who are in the cast, he said. Along with Skarsgard and Jackson, the film co-stars Margot Robbie and Academy Award winner Christoph Waltz. “If you can get those folks involved, it is the script they are responding to,” he said. The eight-episode Netflix “Tarzan and Jane” series, which will also debut next year, is produced by 41 Entertainment in Greenwich, Conn. The show will focus on a teenage Tarzan after he has been rescued from the jungle and is now at prep school with classmate Jane. The series will gives the Jane character more prominence than she has in other story arcs, Sullos said. The heavy focus on the female counterpart continues an alternative take on the Tarzan story that started in 2012 with the publication of romantic novel “Jane: The Woman Who Loved Tarzan” by Robin Maxwell. “The book was the first step, the series is the second step,” Sullos said.