Whilst creativity at the majors with their big-budget blockbusters might be at the lowest ebb cinema has seen since probably the early 90's, there's an annual conglomerate of highly inventive low-budget spectacles that are proving that no matter how small the cash behind an idea, it's still the skill and the execution (and of course the marketing campaign) where it all counts. Following in the footsteps of Paranormal Activity, Russian filmmaker
Timur Bekmambetov has been quietly producing a low-budget, realistic doc-like, space-set alien horror that tells the revisionist tale of the
Apollo 18 crew and it's early 70's aborted moon mission, which in this fictional timeline wasn't actually canceled by NASA before take off but in actual fact took flight and discovered extraterrestrial beings on the moon. The idea being it's another 'found footage' movie like Cloverfield but this time shot by the original crew during their mission. Apparently for years conspiracy theorists (yes, those same pesky people who say we NEVER went to the moon in the first place!) have speculated the cancellation was actually a ruse because the mission actually happened and NASA found something they didn't want to tell us about. This of course is an idea that lends itself perfectly to a viral marketing campaign that COULD go mainstream very quickly. Potentially, you could easy see this becoming a $100 million domestic feature.
To his credit, Bekmambetov has kept the film secret for months now as it's so far into production that upon seeing footage The Weinstein Company were so impressed they snagged the distribution rights at the weekend, slapping it with a
March 13th, 2011 release. They have also agreed to fully finance the project and presumably trailers will be attached to screenings early next year, if not sooner. Bekmambetov has been creatively supervising former Matrix sequels f/x guy
Trevor Caewood in the director's chair for his feature film debut. The Wanted filmmakers next movie will be his
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, that's
casting now and is due in June 2012. Meanwhile, he hopes to further scratch his space thriller itch by potentially producing/directing Predators scribes
Alex Litvak and
Mike Finch's pitch for another untitled secret project.