John Carter’s Mars is Getting Crowded, Three More Cast

You can add three more names to Disney’s upcoming “John Carter of Mars” in Thomas Haden Church, James Purefoy and Mark Strong. The trio join a cast that already includes leads Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins.

THR says Church, Sandman in “Spider-Man 3″, will be playing Tal Hajus, an ambitious and vicious Thark warrior who is biding his time to be a ruler. Purefoy (pictured, above left), recently the lead in the fantasy-action movie “Solomon Kane”, will be playing a character named Kantos Kan, the captain of the Xavarian, the kingdom of Helium’s grand warship. Meanwhile, Strong, who recently finished playing a bad guy in “Sherlock Holmes”, sounds like he’s playing another bad guy in Matai Shang, the ruler of the Thems with godlike status.

Besides former “Wolverine” mates Kitsch and Collins, the cast already includes Willem Dafoe, Samantha Morton, Dominic West, and Polly Walker.

Andrew Stanton is directing the live-action movie, based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs book series.

This is gonna be big, folks, real big.