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$300 Sci-Fi YouTube Video Lands $30m Movie Deal
krou writes "A producer from Uruguay who made a short science fiction film and uploaded it to YouTube has landed a film deal with Sam Raimi's Ghost House worth $300 million. The film, which shows spaceships and giant robots attacking Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, was made by Fede Alvarez for around $30. 'I uploaded (Panic Attack!) on a Thursday and on Monday my inbox was totally full of e-mails from Hollywood studios,' he said. Alvarez is to develop and direct a film based on one of his ideas, but there is no word yet on the writer."
Both articles mention $30 million, not $300 million.
Further proof that Hollywood is running out of good ideas, and must turn to new sources.
It's not even new - it's "War of the Worlds" and "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" mixed together.
The guy did a great job with the special effects, but story wise - meh.
Golloywierd will throw in some hot chick in short shorts and lots of cleavage and it'll make a few hundred million.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Who knew that the man behind Spiderman, The Grudge, Evil Dead, and Drag Me to Hell is a fan of cheesy low budget special effects.
Capitalism: When it uses the carrot, it's called democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called fascism.
Here's the link to the original video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPvmIxu-LSA
(NFSW language. If you work in a lame place. My co-workers laughed their asses off.)
Comment of the year
As awesome as that video is - and it is pretty damn awesome, let there be no mistake about that - I suspect that it only cost $300 if he's considering the time of himself and his friends to be worth zero. (I'm assuming the group scenes were the result of getting a bunch of buddies together.)
I'd be interested to know how many hours of his own time were spent on that.
However, it is pretty awesome and the mere fact that he can do stuff like that with his limited resources is a sign that he may well deserve that money.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
I forgot to say, the guy the most well known TV publicity director in Uruguay; this is not just a "youtube video". His official website is http://www.aparato.tv/
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
South Africa was already occupied.
That price clearly does not include the value of his time or any number of other things
The value of your time is whatever someone is paying you for it. If nobody is paying you for it, then that time is worth $0. It almost certainly has a non-monetary worth, but you don't add that to your budget tally.
For a direct comparison, when the contractor working on my house bills me for 20 hours at $30, and tells me that he donated 3 hours to fix a mistake he made or because he was being anal retentive about getting something perfect, my bill is $600. Those extra three hours, hypothetically worth $30 each, actually cost $0.
Just call it a hobby project or something, but don't claim it only cost $300.
It certainly was a hobby project, yet I don't see why that means it couldn't have been made for $300. My contractor isn't doing it as a hobby, it's his livelihood, yet the same rules apply.
The enemies of Democracy are
Am I the only one who thinks that the whole situation was setup as a viral marketing/PR stunt? Maybe I'm just naturally distrustful of Hollywood.
It is easier to sell tickets to another run of the mill Sci-Fi movie if it has a story like this behind it.
The project is budgeted at 30M.
This is Alvarez's first project, probably no agent, definitely no actors attached to it, so they will probably give him an 'advance' and then lots of interdependent if-then conditionals. He won't get any on-screen credits. (That sets off a bunch of payouts the producer normally keeps) Then one of two things happen to a first-time writer/creator.
1. The conditionals are never met. Alvarez keeps his pittance of an advance and makes a little beer money. This is normally how it works for a project off the street.
2. The producer reinterprets the contract or has some sort of magical contractual difficulty with Alvarez if the project is successful. Alvarez then might see his five figures after a few rounds in court and 6-figure legal bills.
Check out the legal wrangling on 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' as an example. According to the producer, that was an 'unprofitable' film. Welcome to business deals in Hollywood.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Being able to make movies much cheaper is a good thing. Means making a movie is much less financially risky, so people are more likely to back something new and unknown. Consumer grade equipment is getting better all the time, perhaps holywood won't be needed. This plus file sharing must have holywood filling their pants, not sure drawing such attention with such large sums of money was wise for them.....
No offense intended to the great nation of Uruguay, but why would giant robotic aliens give a rat's ass about Montevideo of all places?
They've been intercepting our interwebs for some time now and as such they've been watching porn from 8thstreetlatinas.net. Like most gigantic robotic overlords they require fresh, nimble, "barely legal" workers for their Energon mines in order to continue to function properly and thus continue to watch even more porn as well as do all those other things that overlords do. Pass pointless laws, monitor the pleebs, protect the children, make deals with other alien overlords, etc.
I know this because I too am a slave of the robotic overlords however, I work in accounting...
No offense, but maybe you should not have cast yourself in the lead role?
Even there, anyone can see that if you used the proper accounting methods, the budget was probaly way more than $300.
That's your answer right there. You can't swing a dead cat* in Hollywood without hitting a dozen writers. Mr. Raimi doesn't need any more writers, but creative accountants are gold.
*No actual cats were harmed during this post.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Primer was one of the best sci-fi movies I've ever seen, on a budget of $7,000. It's about damn time that guy gets the funding he needs to bring his other ideas to fruition.
Name...That...Autocomplete!
Why not? He only needed a 30-second video.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
What? Other than FX, which hollywood is pretty good at, what exactly does this film show?
That at least one of the barriers to market entry (the cost of producing good FX) is much lower than many people expect. Lower barriers to market entry mean more competition, potentially, which could be good for us lazy consumers either through lowering the cost of our entertainment or, preferably, increasing the variety of it.
Why might it improve variety? Good FX this cheap means there is one less thing standing between some impoverished writer/directer with good ideas and opportunities for him/her to see those ideas brought to fruition without having to involve the big money people who will panel beat the ideas into a lifeless mush designed not to put off any of the lowest common denominator audience by asking them to think and/or feel something they haven't thought/felt many times before from watching the homogenised output the industry is often lambasted for. The FX don't need to be giant robots - if things keep moving this way (and I don't see why they shouldn't) in the near future anyone with the right ideas+talent+time could create a full CGI production (removing set and sound studio expenses and reducing casting issues) of any type, not just SciFi/fantasy.
In short, this guy has achieved something impressive on a very low budget. Given his achievement, even while accepting it isn't perfect by any means, don't you wonder what he and/or other people could do in future with more time+budget?
Oh, I clicked one of those hoping that the media had thought the attack was real, War of the Worlds style.
Too bad.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Indeed, and you should meet her -- perfect figure, great listener, up for anything. She's a real doll.
movie? Shows it is better to post in youtube than to pimp your movie project in slashdot.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This guy did a great job! 300 bucks, uploaded to Youtube, and he gets a Hollywood gig out it!! It's the Cherished Daydream of half the digital video hacks on this board -- maybe the whole 'Net. And you're going to hate on him because you think it's merely "a very pretty video of a special effects demo."
God bless this sonuvabitch. Let's see you do better.