Thanks to a deft faux trailer edited together by Jaron Pitts — using footage from Avatar, Resident Evil, and The Island — Warner Bros. hired the writer of Shutter Island to adapt this little-seen Serbian animated scifi thriller.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Technotise ball was set in motion when producers Scott Glassgold and Raymond Brothers acquired the remake rights to the 2009 Serbian flick — about a struggling art student in the Belgrade of 2074 who turns to implants for an edge and, naturally, finds herself in over her head with crazy biotech — and saw the fake Green Lantern trailer that Jaron Pitts put together. Glassgold and Brothers hired Pitts to do the same thing, stitch together footage from pre-existing films to jazz viewers about Technotise's potential. And here's what he delivered:
On the strength of that trailer — plus a pitch written by Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island) — Legendary Pictures, through their cofinancing deal with Warner Bros., ponied up low seven figures for the rights.
We seem to be living in a new crazy world where, in some cases, well-cut mashup trailers can unlock the magic Hollywood money vault.
(Via Heat Vision)