By Those of you who dared to accept Kung Fu Panda‘s staring contest challenge might not be aware that it isn’t being helmed by the original Kung Fu Panda director. (I know, shocking.) John Stevenson has broken with Dreamworks to pursue a glitzy career with Vanguard, the studio best known for Space Chimps 2: Zartog Strikes Back.
We at Flixist have been made aware of his inspired new project, and by inspired I mean reverse-engineered from Daft Punk’s animated film Interstella 5555, directly. Alien Rock Band is described by slashfilm as:Â
“a live action/CGI hybrid that revolves around a garage band from Earth which journeys across the Universe to qualify for a shot at superstardom in an Intergalactic Battle of the Bands, where they’ll have to compete with multi-armed alien monsters.”
For the robot rock uninitiated, Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystemwas directed by late-70’s anime icon Leiji Matsumoto and released in 2003. It plays like a narratively driven music video that spans an entire album rather than just one song, and is about a pop band from space that achieves intergalactic superstardom, after which they compete with armed alien monsters that bring them…
Those of you who dared to accept Kung Fu Panda's staring contest challenge might not be aware that it isn't being helmed by the original Kung Fu Panda director. (I know, shocking.) John Stevenson has broken with Dreamworks to pursue a glitzy career with Vanguard, the studio best known for Space Chimps 2: Zartog Strikes Back.
We at Flixist have been made aware of his inspired new project, and by inspired I mean reverse-engineered from Daft Punk's animated film Interstella 5555, directly. Alien Rock Band is described by slashfilm as:
"a live action/CGI hybrid that revolves around a garage band from Earth which journeys across the Universe to qualify for a shot at superstardom in an Intergalactic Battle of the Bands, where they’ll have to compete with multi-armed alien monsters."
For the robot rock uninitiated, Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem was directed by late-70's anime icon Leiji Matsumoto and released in 2003. It plays like a narratively driven music video that spans an entire album rather than just one song, and is about a pop band from space that achieves intergalactic superstardom, after which they compete with armed alien monsters that bring them to Earth.
It isn't the parallels of plot that struck me but the concept art, which invokes the same exact look and feel of that film and can be viewed at the artists webpage (and the header image of this article).
Finally, on a related note this (thankfully) means Stevenson will not be directing the film adaptation of Grant Morrison's We3 as rumored. If you're familiar with the comic book you may want to stay tuned, as later this month I'll be posting an interview with the director of the Morrison documentary film Talking with Gods.