The Inside Story of the Incredible 'Pixels' Short That Inspired the Movie
Adam Sandler’s Pixels is racking up more low scores than a newb at the arcade. The funnyman’s new film, which finds classic ‘80s arcade characters invading New York, currently rates a lowly 10 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 26 percent on Metacritic, the two chief review-aggregation sites.
Still, the 8-bit romp, directed by Chris Columbus and also starring Kevin James, Peter Dinklage, Michelle Monaghan, and Josh Gad, appears critic-proof. The movie is tracking at a solid $30 million-plus, should open on top of this weekend’s box-office charts, and will be on pace to recoup its roughly $90 million production costs.
Related: 'Pixels Insta-Commentary — How Director Chris Columbus Made Pac-Man Eat New York
But long before Sandler and crew dusted off their joysticks, there was another Pixels. In 2010, French graphic designer Patrick Jean released a delightful two-minute film that would inspire the big-budget version. (Watch it above.)
“The concept comes from all these games I used to play in my childhood. I loved them!” Jean tells Yahoo Movies. “Then it comes from the movie Ghostbusters, The Last Starfighter, and all these classics I used to watch in VHS format at home, in my village in the west of France.”
“The concept comes from all these games I used to play in my childhood. I loved them!” Jean tells Yahoo Movies. “Then it comes from the movie Ghostbusters, The Last Starfighter, and all these classics I used to watch in VHS format at home, in my village in the west of France.”
In the short, a junked tube television unleashes a pixelated cloud upon the Big Apple. It spawns creatures from Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Tetris, Pong, and Frogger that reduce Manhattan — and the Earth — into 8-bit rubble. Roll credits.
Originally, Pixels was going to be set in Paris. “But the producer of the short, Benjamin Darras, thought it would be a good idea to shoot it in New York. And he was right,” says Jean. “The location was just perfect for what I had in mind. Especially the Donkey Kong shot, on top of the Empire State.” The Sandler version, in theaters Friday, keeps Manhattan as the backdrop.
Donkey Kong, it turns out, was the most difficult character to animate. “It took me time to have him look right from every angle,” explains Jean. “He’s 2D originally.” Jean also had to be judicious in his use of games — he wanted to include another of his favorites, Asteroids, but had to cut it for the short’s release. (“But I included it in a longer, 'director’s cut’ version of the short,” he says.)
Anyone who has seen the film’s trailer can guess Jean’s favorite character: “Pac-Man, definitely. We were lucky enough on the [Columbus-Sandler] shoot to work with Toru Iwatani [the game’s creator],” Jean says, adding that meeting Iwatani on the film set was his favorite behind-the-scenes moment. “He’s my idol.”
The Pixels short was a sensation from the moment it debuted online in 2010. It quickly exceeded 1 million views, and Hollywood came calling. Columbia Pictures and Sandler’s Happy Madison acquired the film rights soon after the short’s premiere.
“It was awesome,” Jean, who is currently developing both an animated feature and a live-action project, says of his experience transforming his modest short into a would-be blockbuster. “At some point I had to hand over the project to Chris Columbus, when the budget grew and when the studio got excited.” But Jean remained involved throughout the production.
And as far as he’s concerned, it’s not game over for Pixels just yet. Says Jean: “I hope we get to do a sequel.”
Watch the ‘Pixels’ movie trailer:
