Ruairi Robinson to Direct the Sci-Fi Thriller THE ANIMATORS

First time feature film director Ruairi Robinson is attached to direct a sci-fi thriller called The Animators which centers on a crew of astronauts who are picked off one by one by a malevolent force.

Robinson has directed a few short films, including a trailer to one of these shorts that we recently posted called Blinky which stars Max Records (Where the Wild Things Are). He was also nominated for an Oscar in 2001 for a short film he made called Fifty Percent Grey.

The guy seems like he's got some solid talent. At one point he was being looked at as a possible director for the live-action Akira film. The Animators is set to shoot in early 2011. The script for the film was written by Clive Dawson. The Playlist has read it and says it is “reminiscent of Carpenter’s The Thing.” They describe the story as follows,

A crew of astronauts on the Martian surface, who discover evidence of bacterial life. It won’t greatly surprise you that things go downhill from there, and the explorers start to be killed off. Dawson’s script is well executed, there’s some good character work.

This sounds like it could end up being a really cool movie. Here is a short film directed by Robinson called The Silent City: