A new space race is born between NASA and the ESA when Charlie Brownsville Duplass, director of "Cyrus" and star of "Humpday"), Hank Morrison (Paul Gordon), and Dr. Casey Cook (Zoe Simpson) compete against an artificially intelligent robot to find out what's up there on the red planet. MARS follows these three astronauts on the first manned mission to our galactic neighbor. On the way they face adventure, self doubts, obnoxious reporters, and the boredom of extended space travel.
MARS also features iconoclastic Texas humorist-musician-politico Kinky Friedman as the President of the United States, along with Giant Sand singer-songwriter Howe Gelb, comic book artist and rock-n-roller James Kochalka, Cynthia Watros ("Lost"), and Liza Weil ("Gilmore Girls").
This romantic comedy is told in the playful style of a graphic novel - using an animation process that director Geoff Marslett developed specifically for MARS. Underneath the silliness it is an exploration of exploration. Why do we want to know what's out there? How do we react when we find it? Is it really that important? And where does love fit into the whole thing?
