VANCOUVER, British Columbia,
June 26, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Last
Studio Standing, (www.laststudiostanding.com) the largest hand
drawn studio in the Americas, kicked off its move into the English
language market by acquiring William
Gibson's sci-fi masterpiece Hinterlands. Gibson is
best known as the father of the cyberpunk movement and coined the
term "cyberspace". The first installment of his work will be
brought to the screen in 2018.
"It is such a great story," says Jonathan Kitzen, CEO of Last Studio Standing.
"We know we can do more with it because animation is an
all-powerful tool that can create anything." One of the
reasons Last Studio Standing has moved to developing science
fiction is the ability to produce content at the fraction of the
cost of live action. "We plan on making something that looks like
Gravity mixed with Blade Runner, and this story
offers us a huge pallet of possibilities, for about $100 million less than a traditional live action
film," says Kitzen.
In Hinterlands, a Russian space mission vanishes in
mid-flight to Mars and reappears two years later. When a rescue
mission reaches the ship, they find the cosmonaut dead but a
seashell grasped in her hand. What follows is the discovery
of a passage to another place, where the technology isn't
necessarily more advanced but just very different from our
Universe. All future missions fail to bring back any digital data,
only handwritten notes survive, and the crews come back dead or
insane. This sets the stage for an intense mystery of what lies on
the other side. The production focuses on the massive economic and
social upheaval that follows and how it informs and changes the
lives of the characters in the story.
"The mystery of the unknown is the most powerful story telling
tool there is, and when you have the opportunity to combine it with
science-fiction, to be able to show the audience the way things
might be in the future, there is this real magic there," explains
Hernan Zajec. "Jonathan wants us to
use a lot of physics modeling for the movement, so it has this
realism to it, which is what science-fiction is, and this is a
really fun challenge!"
The show goes to great lengths to ensure scientifically accurate
and feasible concepts and stories. "We want this to appeal to the
hard core sci-fi lovers and we will not treat the audience as
idiots," says Kitzen. This means far more world building and a more
extensive rulebook for the writers to follow to create a sense of
consistency.
The studio plans to make a pilot and release it as a theatrical
film, and will continue with a 100 x 30 episode television
series. There is a five-year plan for the series, which
includes the possibility of an additional spin-off series. The team
says the show will take animation to a place where no film has ever
gone before.
About Last Studio Standing
Last Studio Standing is a
merger between ConVRter Technologies, a Canadian based corporation
and the recipient of National Research
Council funding for experimental vision systems and Conexion
Creativa, an award winning Colombian animation studio with the
largest library of any Latin American company. It is currently the
largest hand drawn animation studio in the Western Hemisphere.
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SOURCE Last Studio Standing