What would you do if you and your friends unlocked the mysteries of time travel? Maybe you'd go back and ace that test that you flunked the first time around. Maybe you'd take the chance and kiss that girl you were pretty sure was into you. Or maybe you'd rig the lottery and win it all. At least these are some of the choices made by the teen time traveler's at the center of the upcoming thriller Welcome to Yesterday.
Yahoo debuted the trailer for Welcome to Yesterday, and as you can see above, time traveling can be pretty sweet! You can prank yourself, party like time doesn't matter, and get an edge in every aspect of life, from school to romance and money. But while these kids have clearly seen Groundhog Day they apparently missed out on The Butterfly Effect. See, all these changes they are making to the past are beginning to have unforeseen repercussions on the present, like wild fires and catastrophic plane crashes. Realizing they aren't the masters of time and space they once thought they were, they now have to figure out to fix the damage they've done before it's too late.
Welcome to Yesterday is clearly pulling some inspirations from other time travel movies, like Groundhog's Day, Butterfly Effect, The Conjuring and Back to the Future Part II. But the low-budget look and casting of little known actors helps give this trailer a fresh and gritty spin on the genre.
We first took notice of this project when it was called Almanac, a script written by up and coming scribes Jason Pagan and Andrew Stark , who have since been plucked to pen Paranormal Activity 5. Last winter, this story about a boy who uses the time machine his dad built and an old sport almanac to win his way to wealth and the girl of his dreams attracted the attention of Michael Bay, who signed on to produce through his banner Platinum Dunes. By May of this year, Dean Israelite was set to make this his feature directorial debut, and Bay had brought on board some rising talents like Jonny Weston and Sofia Black-D’Elia to front the found footage feature.
With a budget of only $12 million, Platinum Dunes was hoping to make a lean little thriller that could pay off like 2012's Chronicle, an unconventionally intimate $12 mil superhero movie that went on to earn a whopping $126 million worldwide. While the hopes are obviously high for Welcome to Yesterday, the risks are pretty low with a budget and cast like this. But if this time travel thriller takes off, it could well launch its stars the way Chronicle did Michael B. Jordan and Dane DeHaan. We'll discover how this gamble will pay off when Welcome to Yesterday hits theaters on February 28th.
