Producer John Davis, who was one of the people that shepherded Josh Trank and Max Landis’ box office hit Chronicle to the big screen, has zeroed in on another filmmaker with a sci-fi flavoured short film background who he thinks might make the leap. He’s just picked up the rights to Aaron Sims’ Archetype, which you can watch below.

Archetype follows what happens when a hulking war machine suddenly seems to malfunction in the field. It’s brought in for testing and questioning by Jones (Robert Joy) about why it shut down its fellow battle ‘bots with an EM pulse. Seems there might be a ghost in the machine, with RL7 getting a case of the Johnny Fives. Or, given what we learn later in the short, more likely it’s all gone a bit Robocop…

Sims isn’t exactly a Hollywood newcomer: he runs a VFX and design company and has contributed work to everything from Clash Of The Titans to Big Fish and Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes. He also has experience working with the Stan Winston Studio.

As for Davis, he’s got form bringing the stories of rampaging robots to the screen, having produced I, Robot for Fox back in 2004. He’ll be working with Sims to get Archetype converted into a feature length story (possibly alongside the short’s writer, Zachary Parris), but there’s nothing else in place yet.