Theater
A stage production of "Way in the Middle of the Air" was produced at the Desilu Studios Gower Studios, Hollywood, California in 1962.[39]
The debut of a theater adaptation of The Martian Chronicles was at the Cricket Theater (The Ritz) in Northeast Minneapolis in 1976.[40]
Film
MGM bought the film rights in 1960 but no film was made.[41]
In 1988, the Soviet Armenian studio Armenfilm produced the feature film The 13th Apostle, starring Juozas Budraitis, Donatas Banionis, Armen Dzhigarkhanyan, based on The Martian Chronicles. The film was directed by Armenian actor and screenwriter, Suren Babayan.[42]
The Uzbek filmmaker Nozim To'laho'jayev made two films based on sections from the book: 1984's animated short There Will Come Soft Rains (Russian: Будет ласковый дождь)[43] and 1987's full-length live action film Veld (Russian: Вельд), with one of the subplots based on The Martian.[44]
In 2011 Paramount Pictures acquired the film rights with the intention of producing a film franchise, with John Davis producing through Davis Entertainment.[45]
Music
The Martian Chronicles was adapted as a full-length contemporary opera by composer Daniel Levy and librettist Elizabeth Margid.[46] This is the only musical adaptation authorized by Bradbury himself, who turned down Lerner and Loewe in the 1960s when they asked his permission to make a musical based on the novel.[47] The work received its initial readings from the Harriet Lake Festival of New Plays at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater in 2006,[48] and was presented in workshop form in the inaugural season of the Fordham University Lincoln Center Alumni Company in 2008.[49] The "Night Meeting" episode was presented at Cornelia Street Cafe's "Entertaining Science" series on June 9, 2013.[50] The entire work was presented as a staged reading with a cast of Broadway actors at Ars Nova NYC on February 11, 2015.[51] Three scenes were presented as a workshop production with immersive staging, directed by Carlos Armesto of Theatre C and conducted by Benjamin Smoulder at Miami University, Oxford OH on September 17–19, 2015.[52]
In 2001 a Danish melodic metal band Royal Hunt released a concept album called "The Mission," based on "The Martian Chronicles."
Radio
The Martian Chronicles was adapted for radio in the science fiction radio series Dimension X. This truncated version contained elements of the stories "Rocket Summer", "Ylla", "–and the Moon Be Still as Bright", "The Settlers", "The Locusts", "The Shore", "The Off Season", "There Will Come Soft Rains", and "The Million-Year Picnic".
"—and the Moon Be Still as Bright" and "There Will Come Soft Rains" were also adapted for separate episodes in the same series. The short stories "Mars Is Heaven" and "Dwellers in Silence" also appeared as episodes of Dimension X. The latter is in a very different form from the one found in The Martian Chronicles.
A very abridged spoken word reading of "There Will Come Soft Rains" and "Usher II" was made in 1975 with Leonard Nimoy as narrator.
A BBC Radio 4 adaption, produced by Andrew Mark Sewell as an hour-long programme and starring Derek Jacobi as Captain Wilder, was broadcast on June 21, 2014, as part of the Dangerous Visions series.[53][54]
Television miniseries
In 1979 NBC partnered with the BBC to commission The Martian Chronicles, a three-episode miniseries adaptation running just over four hours. It was written by Richard Matheson and was directed by Michael Anderson. Rock Hudson starred as Wilder, Darren McGavin as Parkhill, Bernadette Peters as Genevieve Selsor, Bernie Casey as Jeff Spender, Roddy McDowall as Father Stone, and Barry Morse as Hathaway, as well as Fritz Weaver. Bradbury found the miniseries "just boring".[55]
Television adaptations of individual stories
The cable television series The Ray Bradbury Theater adapted some individual short stories from The Martian Chronicles including "Mars is Heaven", "The Earthmen", "And the Moon Be Still as Bright", "Usher II", "The Martian", "Silent Towns", and "The Long Years".[56] Video releases of the series included a VHS tape entitled Ray Bradbury's Chronicles: The Martian Episodes with some editions with three episodes and others with five.[57][58][59]
Comic books
Several of the short stories in The Martian Chronicles were adapted into graphic novel-style stories in the EC Comics magazines, including "There Will Come Soft Rains" in Weird Fantasy #17, "The Long Years" in Weird Science #17, "Mars Is Heaven" in Weird Science #18, "The Million-Year Picnic" in Weird Fantasy #21 and "The Silent Towns" in Weird Fantasy #22.
In 2011, Hill & Wang published Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles: The Authorized Adaptation as a graphic novel, with art by Dennis Calero.[60]
Video games
The Martian Chronicles adventure game was published in 1996.
