From Uruguay to Hollywood
Here's a fairy tale that could only happen in the movies. Man makes YouTube video. Goes to Hollywood. Gets pots of money and a movie deal. Except this story is true.
An unknown producer from Uruguay, Fede Alvarez, shelled out about $300 to create a cool video of a robot invasion in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. The four-minute short, "Ataque de Panico!" (Panic Attack) features ginormous (but slow-moving) weapon-wielding robots that blow stuff up.
We have to admit, it has pretty amazing production values. The Playlist gushed that the director may be the next Neill Blomkamp, who made the South African-based alien flick "District 9." With the blog abuzz, the South American short went viral, and has already been viewed on YouTube 1.5 million times.
Well, apparently nothing gets by Hollywood these days. The lucky duck told the BBC, "I uploaded 'Ataque de Panico!' on a Thursday and on Monday my inbox was totally full of emails from Hollywood studios." Long story short, a bidding war ensued. The offer he pocketed: A $30 million deal with Sam "Spiderman" Raimi's Ghost House Pictures. That's a nice return on investment.
The picture will be a sci-fi thriller set in Argentina and Uruguay. In case you're hoping to see the feature-length version of "Panic Attack!" in a movie theater, it won't be from this deal. The newly minted "it" guy says he will start from scratch.
Here's the video that got him Hollywood gold.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dadPWhEhVk
This News brought to you by Claudine Zap from Yahoo! Buzz Log
http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/buzzlog-uruguay-to-hollywood.html
Well... That's really cool!
When I first saw this on some other site I was very impressed but now with this news and hear more info on how it was made just amazes me.
Wow, that's a very impressive clip with some great effects for such a small (tiny!) budget.
AWESOME !!! Hollywood and all the big budget guys could learn from this, give me a story without all the cgi crap!!
How is the movie made within $300? I see a whole bunch of people in the credits, including camera crew, transportation and catering. Do all these people work for free, or is the pay really that low in Uruguay?
Thats fantastic work. With advances in the PC industry its getting cheaper and easier to people outside of the big production houses to do some pretty amazing stuff and this new blood will help drive the movie industry greatly into the future. Kudos to Fede Alvarez for showing just how pro you can be on a budget.
This is the sort of inspiration that kids these days need to motivate them to get into the film industry.
It looks amazing work. Love the whole clip. Hes getting e-mails all the time from Hollywood.
Wow, i love these type of homebrew movies. Remembers me of the half-life 2 short live action series made by a couple of guys [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1UPMEmCqZo] and the what's in the box series if you've heard of it [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU_reTt7Hj4] epic stuff. Congrat to to the new millionaire :P