The hand-drawn animation studio Last Studio Standing just announced plans to adapt William Gibson’s sci-fi story “Hinterlands” into a short film and a television series, with a potential second TV series that could spin off the first.
Concept art from Hinterlands. All Images: Last Studio Standing
The short story, originally published in 1981, is about a Russian space station that goes missing, only to reappear years later with everyone dead. Soon, people realise any ship that goes to those coordinates disappears into a mysterious other place. Everyone who goes, dies — but then some of their remains start returning with clues about this other place.
“It is such a great story,” says Jonathan Kitzen, CEO of Last Studio Standing in a news release. “We know we can do more with it because animation is an all-powerful tool that can create anything. We plan on making something that looks like Gravity mixed with Blade Runner, and this story offers us a huge palette of possibilities, for about $100 million less than a traditional live action film.”
By 2018, Last Studio Standing hopes to have a short pilot episode done for a longer TV show. It will show the pilot in theatres, then kick off what is described as a “five year plan” for the franchise, including a TV show with a potential spin-off.
Above, and below, are some concept art released for the show.
This is one of those impressively ambitious plans that has one potentially fatal flaw: We don’t know if it works yet. What if the pilot episode isn’t a success? Or what if the show does get released somewhere, but fades after two years? What happens then? Does this five-year plan just go away? I’m always wary of anyone that plans an elaborate franchise (cough Dark Universe cough) without some upfront success. If Iron Man wasn’t a hit, there’s a good chance The Avengers wouldn’t have happened. Pixar wasn’t planning Toy Story 3 before Toy Story came out, the studio just wanted to make one good movie. The list goes on and on.
[referenced url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2016/07/some-movies-are-so-worried-about-setting-up-a-sequel-they-forget-to-be-good/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/fqvyt51vrkuofnndynwb.jpg” title=”Some Movies Are So Worried About Setting Up A Sequel They Forget To Be Good” excerpt=”You can’t blame Hollywood for its non-stop deluge of remakes, sequels and prequels. Audiences keep showing up for them, and they take one of the most difficult parts of art — the idea — out of the equation. What’s unforgivable though is making a movie under the assumption a sequel will be made after it.”]
Certainly, though, we hope Last Studio Standing gives us that “Gravity mixed with Blade Runner” animated show of our dreams. It could be amazing.
For more information, visit their website.