Mar 18, 2015

The first "pixel" trailer is here

The first trailer for the upcoming film Pixels has been released.

Starring onetime Donkey Kong defender Adam Sandler and co-produced by Sandler's Happy Madison Pictures with Columbia Pictures and 1492 Pictures, the film features a host of larger-than-life classic arcade game characters and a human cast, grappling with the idea of Pac-Man being a bad guy.

The film was inspired by the viral 2010 short of the same name by French director Patrick Jean. The original high-concept two-and-a-half-minute short featured Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Arkanoids, Tetris tiles and Frogger running amok in New York City with little suggestion of a story.

The new screenplay, by Timothy Dowling (Role Models, Just Go With It) and longtime Sandler collaborator Tim Herlihy (Happy Gilmore, The Waterboy), overlays the inevitable alien invasion plot, with Sandler and co-stars Kevin James, Josh Gad, Peter Dinklage, Michelle Monaghan, and the scene-stealing Denis Akiyama as Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani, squaring off against its 8-bit attackers in Blinky, Inky, Pinky and Clyde-colored Mini-Coopers. Speaking of inevitable: the trailer's call to action, “It's Game On”.

The film is directed by Chris Columbus, whose last theatrical film as director was 2010's Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief.

Pixels will be released on July 24, 2015.