From fast-paced sci-fi to sneezing pandas, here are 10 short films that are currently being developed into big-screen features...
Much has been said, in recent years, about Hollywood’s love of sequels, remakes, and adaptations of outlandish properties, such as this year’s Battleship. Following the success of Neill Blomkamp’s District 9, adapted from the director’s own short, Alive In Joburg, producers have been keeping a closer eye on the work of lesser-known filmmakers. And over the past 18 months or so, a number of other short films have caught the eye of various film producers, and currently have a feature-length adaptation in the works.
Whether any of the adapted versions of the films laid out below will have the impact of District 9 is anyone’s guess, but the best of them are full of stunning visuals and clever ideas - often on miniscule budgets. And as Hollywood looks for ways of making hit movies on economical budgets, it’s little surprise that it’s clamouring to contact any filmmaker who can make a science fiction movie, complete with impressive CG effects, for the price of a second-hand car...
Pixels
Unless you managed to avoid the Internet entirely in 2010, you’ll almost certainly have already seen French filmmaker’s Patrick Jean’s clever short, Pixels. Simple in concept, the two-and-a-half minute film saw New York invaded by an army of 8-bit videogame characters. Featuring (unlicensed) cameos from 80s heroes such as Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, and with lots of references to dozens of antique games including Arkanoid and Tetris, it integrated live-action and computer imagery almost seamlessly.
Shortly after the film appeared on YouTube, Adam Sandler’s production company Happy Madison announced its intention to make Pixels into a “Ghostbusters-style action comedy” with Tim Herlihy (writer of Adam Sandler comedies such as The Wedding Singer and Little Nicky, among other things) in charge of the script.
Little more was said about Pixels thereafter, until it was announced in November 2011 that Sony would be distributing the feature, and that it even had a release date in mind - May 17th 2013.
Quite how the feature-length Pixels will handle the various videogame cameos isn’t yet clear - securing the rights to all those jealously-guarded properties will surely be a licensing nightmare - but with Disney currently working on Wreck-It Ralph, a CG movie based around an 80s videogame hero, maybe the summer of 2013 will be the perfect time for a retro-themed invasion movie.
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