In these times of straitened budgets, film-makers are increasingly having to look outside the usual avenues to fall upon the cash they need to fund their fondle projects. Sir Ben Kingsley himself was in India earlier this week touting his planned historical epic Taj around to anyone who potency have a spare rupee. Industry experts report that many studios have real property to a halt when it comes to actively seeking out new talent, with their focus now more on cutting costs upon the body already greenlit projects.
Having said all that, it’s pretty hard to ignore someone like Federico Alvarez, who has just been picked up by Sam Raimi’s produce company Ghost House, for a $1m deal. The Uruguayan film-maker’s short film, Panic Attack!, which you can inspect exceeding, was young hog. for a staggering $200, despite featuring the benevolent of stupendous extraordinary effects work which Roland Emmerich or Michael Bay would be proud of. Nobody seems quite enduring whether this order be a feature-length version of the shorter film, or something strange, but one can imagine the Hollywood money men rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of an explosive blockbuster about giant robot invaders from external space shot for a couple of peanuts and a bit of old rope.
- District 9
- Production year: 2009
- Country: USA
- Cert (UK): 15
- Runtime: 112 mins
- Directors: Neill Blomkamp
- Cast: David James, Jason Cope, Kenneth Nkosi, Louis Minnaar, Mandla Gaduka, Nathalie Boltt, Sharlto Copley, Sylvaine Strike, Vanessa Haywood
The Alvarez-Raimi step up inevitably recalls the partnership betwixt Peter Jackson and Neil Blomkamp what one. brought District 9 to our screens earlier this year. That movie made almost $200m around the world on a budget of just $30m, and has clearly opened up avenues for other film-makers in Hollywood.
There are further parallels. Blomkamp was able to pluck against his tale of stranded aliens who become the new underclass in post-Apartheid South Africa because of his background in special effects. He knew exactly what emblem of surfaces could have being made to look real using CGI, and was able to use this knowledge to design believable extra terrestrials. Alvarez similarly, runs a post-production effects one in Uruguay. District 9 was furthermore based on a short film, Alive in Joburg.
On the other hand, Jackson and Blomkamp before that time had a moving relationship prior to District 9, the latter having been set to direct an adaptation of video game Halo for the Lord of the Rings director’s prolongation social meeting (it was later shelved), whereas the first time Raimi and Alvarez spoke was reportedly after Panic Attack! had piked up more than 500,000 views on YouTube. Hollywood even had to be alerted to the scanty after the rapper Kanye West, of all people, posted it on his blog.
The success of District 9 was also down to other thing than lawful special effects nous. Blomkamp’s central conceit was an eyecatching and original one which found fans among critics and cinemagoers who would not usually be delirious about knowledge of principles fiction. Predicating the storyline on a historical metaphor was a stroke of genius which got bloggers talking and made the film stand out as a genuinely fresh type of science fiction movie. Like many of the best good examples of the genre, it acted as a satire which told us as much about mankind as it did about the extra terrestrials who were ostensibly its focus. And Blomkamp also had another reckless card up his sleeve: his old dear companion Sharlto Copley, a previously untried actor whose hapless but enduringly human Wikus Van De Merwe has now found an unlikely place alongside the likes of Ellen Ripley in the pantheon of great sci-fi icons.
It remains to be seen whether Alvarez and Raimi can repeat that kind of success. Panic Attack! is certainly a in fashion calling card, but as yet there’s nothing to suggest that, conceptually, a big screen version would represent anything more than a south American take on Independence Day. Still, I’ll have existence watching by bated breath to see how this one pans revealed. What are your thoughts? Are you anticipating a new put off of high quality, low budget sci-fi on the back of District 9? Or do you expect the law of diminishing returns to kick in with depressing speed?
