You may have heard of the family name Amell and that’s because it belongs to two rather hard working actors, those being Robbie Amell of Flash and the new X-Files fame and his slightly older cousin Stephen Amell who runs around in green tights in Arrow (and more recently a baseball mask in the new TMNT movie). A short while ago I got an email asking me to support an Indiegogo campaign and although I still have yet to throw down some money I was intrigued (sorry, the exchange rate is just not good right now!) It was for a short movie called Code 8 something that reminded me of a cross between District 9 and Heroes. Have a look at the short and tell me what you think.
Pretty decent production value with a premise that could most definitely work in today’s popular superhero universe. Thankfully they reached their goal of $200,000 in just a day and a half which is fantastic news for the new producer. Speaking to nerdist Robbie said:
It’s a huge relief. You never know how these things are going to go, but it’s been a lot of fun and the fans have been incredible. The interesting part about it is that it’s been a lot of people buying small perks, there haven’t been like all the huge perks selling. So it’s just a lot of people all chipping in. It’s been like, ‘it takes a village.’ And we’ve been phoning people to say thank you because they give us their phones numbers. It’s been a very weird, very cool experience.
I understand why buying the smaller perks works better than the $500 in this climate I must say and am also really happy it has worked out. Jeff Chan, known for the shorts he has created for the Call of Duty Franchise, directed the 10 minute short and the hopes are that it will either be picked up for a full on movie, or as a TV series. I for one would rather the latter. As Robbie puts it this is different to those other movies that have covered some familiar themes:
It’s a little more grounded than that. We wanted to make everything feel as realistic as possible. There are definitely some similarities there [with] Tomorrow People. Some closer comparisons would be District 9, End of Watch if there was superpowers in it. But this isn’t a superhero movie with costumes. This is a darker world where you’re not celebrated for being a hero. You’re just trying to get by. People with powers are treated like a minority, and most of them live under the poverty line. It’s illegal to use your powers. We weren’t trying to comment on anything specifically but we wanted it to feel relevant and real and grounded.
Of course with the caliber of these actors one can expect a lot of action to come out of Code 8 and when asked about this in an interview with Spinoff Amell gave us some interesting bits of information:
It has to be very contained, and we wanted it to feel real. Although we’re making a movie about people with superpowers, we wanted it to feel as realistic as possible. We are all huge fans of Flash and Arrow, as well as the bigger ones like Avengers and X-Men.We wanted this to feel more like End of Watch with superpowers, not even quite as big as Chronicle. No huge, massive city destruction scene at the end of the movie. We wanted this to be as if people had real powers, what would happen in the world we live in? We had to take a few liberties like creating the Guardian Program, which are the robotic agents you see in the trailer. We wanted to keep the action as grounded as possible. There is action in the short film, but it’s done in a very grounded way.
I just hope that cousin Stephen Amell can keep up with the pace, having to his smash hit series running as well taking on the role of producer (and of course actor) is a burden not many can bare. Still, I’ll keep you posted on the progress of Code 8 and hope we have something awesome to look forward to! You can contribute to the Indiegogo campaign and stand a change to even appear in the movie! Although you would have to fly to Canada…
Last Updated: March 29, 2016
Sandelk
March 29, 2016 at 16:28
This looks awesome