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Sci-Fi Short The Leviathan Has Officially Grabbed Hollywood’s Attention

By on March 24, 2015

Last week, director Ruairi Robinson posted up a three-and-a-half minute short debuting his idea for a new film, dubbed The Leviathan. It’s about future, near-suicidal low-class workers trying to mine a super-important material out of a flying alien whale. Naturally, the internet loudly applauded. You’ll see from the video itself that my portrayal of the tone is so far off the mark, it’s almost like I wanted to set you up to be surprised.

It seems the vociferous clapping sound made its way all the way to Hollywood, enticing the likes of Neil Blomkamp (director of District 9 and other less important movies) and Simon Kinberg (writer and producer for some X-Men films and connected to the new Star Wars stuff out of Disney) as producers for a full-length film, according to Deadline. There was apparently a lot of interest shown to Robinson from many producers since the short’s release online, but Kinberg managed to seal the deal pretty quickly.

Robinson is still a fledgling duck in the world of giant budgets and overwrought expectation. His only major full-length release has been The Last Days on Mars with Liev Schreiber. Don’t worry if you haven’t heard of it. Today, though, Robinson seems pretty pleased with how it all turned out.

Blomkamp, who has struggled to make a splash since his tidal wave of a film debut, District 9, followed a similar path to relevancy, producing science-fiction shorts until getting noticed by the big guys. Perhaps he has some apt advice for Robinson.

More importantly, Blomkamp might have some ideas on how to ground such a generalized, yet impressively realized, idea in The Leviathan. That or he’s just going to class up the joint with some sweet Sigourney Weaver name drops. Blomkamp is set to direct the next Alien movie.

As for what The Leviathan might end up being with a full script and an entire community of producers circling around it like hyenas at a petting zoo – I’d be happy with an actual Dune movie after all this time. And no, Jodorowsky’s Dune, the documentary about a failed Dune movie, does not count. Neither does that Dune movie David Lynch made that one time.

Seriously, how are we still dancing around this, in this day of reboots, three-prequels and franchises that are sequels to other franchises? Dune has the density of about ten movies and the location variety to wet Peter Jackson’s tongue.

Dune Cat

About Trevor Ruben

Though I contribute to many online publications on a regular basis, including The Checkout, the crux of my writing lies in video games. When not writing, I'm often streaming a variety of games on Twitch.