U.K. animation production company Snafu Pictures and Serbian based Bauk Pictures have signed an agreement to co-produce a new animated sci-fi feature film, Beckoning. The production will be structured as a European co-production with filming and animation taking place in the U.K., Serbia and Spain.
The companies are jointly launching the film at Berlinale this week via the JETS Initiative, which will see the project pitched to potential co-production partners and other backers. Beckoning will be one of the first features to be shot entirely using motion capture and leveraging the cutting-edge technological advances in Unreal Engine and MetaHuman.
Lead producers Paul Schleicher and Dan Dixon also have a long history of producing animation and VFX for film, TV, games and advertising, as well as award-winning live-action genre shorts. Through Snafu, they have just delivered a full CG animated series for Netflix, Bad Dinosaurs.
Writer/director Sava Živković will helm Beckoning. Živković’s credits include dozens of multi-million dollar video game cinematics with some of the world’s biggest titles and studios as well as a catalog of independent shorts like Irradiation, which landed more than 3 million views on Short of the Week.
Beckoning has been realized as a cutting edge short, also written and directed by Živković, with the support of an Epic Games MegaGrant as well as financial and hardware support from
AMD.
‘A shipwrecked astronaut fights for survival, amidst a medieval witch-hunt. Beckoning is a gritty sci-fi genre film, where the past and future collide, exploring themes of redemption and motherhood, that will break the mold for an animated feature.’
“We’re thrilled to be launching our feature slate with Beckoning as a lead film,” says Dixon. “It resonates with all of the components we look for in a project; stylistically brave, creator driven, and underpinned with a depth of storytelling. All of this makes Sava a standout voice for us to collaborate with.”
Živković adds, “What excites me the most about Beckoning, is the very personal and intimate character exploration of the lead character, Morgan, juxtaposed with the epic sci-fi setting of the future meeting the past. The film explores what makes you a parent or guardian, along with themes of motherhood, loss, and how the skeletons from our past can take hold of our present.”
Synopsis: A future colonization mission is disrupted when an unknown space-time anomaly violently catapults a ship back in time. Morgan, an astronaut haunted by her own past, crash-lands in 14th-century Russia.
Stranded, surrounded by shards of twisted metal and dead crew-mates, she must overcome this primal world, and an order of Inquisition Knights trying to kill her … and it becomes clear that they are being hunted, in the belief that they are witches.
Following a vicious attack, Morgan must transport her wounded Captain to the last functioning spaceship in the distant mountains. Along the way she reluctantly rescues a local orphan, who has escaped from a nearby village, that was burned by the Inquisition.
Their journey to the crash site is complicated by another group of marooned astronauts, a ship that is leaking radiation, and a hermit who seems to know more about Morgan than he shows. As Morgan starts losing grasp with reality, she’s tormented by dreams and repressed memories of the child she’s lost. She realizes that the orphaned boy is the only anchor she has, and the unlikely duo start to bond.
Upon reaching the last functioning ship, their one hope for survival, they discover it is in-fact a trap laid by the Inquisition. And in order to save the Boy, Morgan will have to make the ultimate sacrifice.
