Since his latest stab at launching a based-on-book film franchise with Percy Jackson (which pretty much succeeded, despite the odds), Chris Columbus has been quiet on the directing front. He’s got several possible movies in development, but now appears to be favouring a new one in particular. The Harry Potter man is now looking at Pixels, based on Patrick Jean’s short, which you can see below{
The blend of live-action and 3D versions of video game characters from the 1980s struck a chord with several studios when Jean premiered his short in 2010. Sony hatched a deal for the rights alongside Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison company.
It originally appeared Jean might be directing the eventual film himself, but now Columbus is in early talks to tackle it based on a script that has so far seen contributions from Sandler regular Tim Herlihy, and Tim Dowling. The concept is apparently a Ghostbusters-style live-action adventure where a group of characters must stop video game nasties from pixelating our world.
Whether Columbus does end up in the director’s chair and whether Sandler decides this could represent his next Bedtime Stories-style family outing remains to be seen. The biggest sticking point might be getting the permission to use more iconic game elements such as Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, whose rights are held elsewhere. If they remain staunchly out of reach, expect whoever makes the movie to work hard to come up with an original menace.