comScore
Uncategorized Tuesday, June 12th 2012 at 8:35 am

J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot to Produce Sci-Fi Film About the Higgs Boson

By ( ) Comments

Remember all that handwringing that went on around the time as CERN prepared to fire up the Large Hadron Collider? Some people were concerned that the enormous particle accelerator would destroy all life as we know it. Thankfully that turned out to not be the case, but it looks like someone thought it sounded like a dandy sci-fi flick.

According to the Vulture, the forthcoming film will be called The God Particle — a name often given to the Higgs boson, a theoretical particle. Though little is known about the movie, which has yet to enter production, but the Vulture did have this intriguing plot synopsis:

After a physics experiment with a large hadron accelerator causes the Earth to seemingly vanish completely, the terrified crew of an orbiting American space station is left floating in the middle of now-even-more-empty space. When a European spacecraft appears on their radar, the Americans must determine whether it’s their salvation, or a harbinger of doom.

Writer Oren Uziel has already penned a script which has been picked up by Paramount Pictures. Thrown into the mix is J.J. Abrams’ production company Bad Robot. Though it’s unlikely that Abrams will be directly involved in the making of the film, the presence of his company only heightens the movie’s geeky cred.

Interestingly, the film is projected to have a teeny-tiny $5 million budget. It would seem that Paramount is hoping that the film will turn out like Paranormal Actitivity, which was made for only $15,000 but went on to bring in nearly $200 million. It might be a long shot, but this kind of low-cost gamble has paid off in the past — most notably with the incredible sci-fi film Moon, which also had a budget of $5 million.

And you can see how it could work: The setting of a space station would mean few actors and sets, freeing up the remaining budget for Earth-vanishing special effects.

Hopefully the influence of Abrams and the tight budgetary restrictions will create some cinematic poetry. That is, of course, if writer Uziel manages to keep the crackpot science to a minimum.

(The Vulture via Coming Soon)

Relevant to your interests

Filed Under | • • • •
  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=615281575 Bill Hedrick

    As long as we get plenty of Lens Flare I will be happy

  • Anonymous

    I hope the plot and script come out making more sense than Prometheus.  What a piece of garbage that movie turned out to be.  True S-F fans everywhere should feel cheated by that one.

  • http://twitter.com/scarecroe scarecroe

    Ugh. As if there weren’t enough bad science in Hollywood.

  • http://twitter.com/Octamed Cameron Bonde

    Hate to break it to you but the script is… bad. At least the draft that I read. Potential spoiler… there’s nothing to spoil. There’s no science at all in it. What little science there is is so hand-wavy as to be irrelevant. In fact, it sounds like a script that was already written and then at the last minute turned into a sci-fi with some higgs stuff because he thought it would sell it. Which, pathetically, worked. It could be set anywhere. 
    Don’t even start comparing it to Moon.

  • http://twitter.com/fionamb83 Fiona Byrne

    It doesn’t sound science related at all, except for the fact they chose to use the LHC at the start of it haha. Nothing could be as scientifically bad as that film where they tried to re-ignite the sun.. As homer once said “In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!”