Two studios with no experience making animated movies have hired a video game artist to make a $50 million CGI flick about a race of aliens who are going through 1950’s style paranoia. I’m not sure what I can add to that. Can I get $25 million to make a movie?
Variety is reporting that Handmade Films (for a while it was George Harrison’s production company, but he sold it in the early 1990’s and lately they’ve made some TV movies) and Ilion Animation Studios (a new offshoot of a Spanish videogame company) are going to make Planet One. They’ve retained Jorge Blanco, whose previous creative credit is as a videogame artist for Commandos, as director. This is one film project where the words “over experienced” will not apply.
The only person here who has actually been involved in a CGI film project previously is writer Joe Stillman. He has been a co-writer of all three Shrek movies and previously worked with Mike Judge on both 'Beavis and Butthead' and 'King of the Hill'.
The plot involves the inhabitants of Planet One who, despite having antennas coming out of their heads, live in a world not unlike 1950’s American suburbia. Along with the picket fences and soda fountains is a fear of alien invasion. When a human astronaut lands on their planet they immediately wet themselves, which is very comical. The wetting themselves part isn’t really true, but a $50 million dollar movie helmed by a video game artist is going to need all the help it can get.
