Bad Robot Plans To Let The Large Hadron Collider Vanish Earth
Bad Robot has done epic-scale sci-fi with movies like Star Trek, mid-range with Super 8, and now it appears they’re trying their hand a something a bit smaller. Reports have it that Paramount picked up a script called God Particle for J.J. Abrams’ company to produce on the cheap.
The script for God Particle comes from Oren Uziel, “who penned the macabre zombies, vampires, and humans-versus-invading-aliens action-comedy The Kitchen Sink for Sony Pictures.” The plan is to shoot the entire thing for under $5 million, an almost unheard of budget in Hollywood.
It is unlikely that Abrams would direct God Particle, but the description definitely sounds like it is right up Bad Robot’s alley. The plot revolves around the crew of an American space station that is left stranded “[a]fter a physics experiment with a large hadron accelerator causes the Earth to seemingly vanish completely.” When another space ship, this one from Europe, the crew “must determine whether it’s their salvation, or a harbinger of doom.”
It’s also a film that you could do for relatively little money. There’s only one primary setting, and the necessary special effects seem manageable. Throw a few unknown actors and an unknown director into the mix, and the Bad Robot logo in front of the trailer is enough to just about guarantee that you turn a profit. God Particle also seems like something that, in the right hands, could turn out to be nice, tight little thriller in space. Stranded floating through the emptiness, with nowhere left to go, brings an inherent tension to any story and provides an immediate source of conflict for the characters. Not a bad set up.
