‘PIXELS’: How a clever two-minute short became an Adam Sandler movie

Here’s a fun fact you didn’t know before now. Well, the Sony’s ‘Pixels’ movie coming out tomorrow was once a short film. Lemme put it this way… it’s an adaptation of a short film. Before “Pixels” became the latest critically derided movie on Adam Sandler’s filmography, it was something very different: a two-and-a-half minute short with a clever concept and impressive execution. The short begins with an old television that has been kicked to the curb and unleashes an ominous pixelated cloud over New York City. Watch it after the break.

It’s a harbinger of mass destruction wrought by everyone’s favorite 1980s video game characters. Pac-Man gobbles up all the subway stops along the 6 Train and Donkey Kong throws barrels from a skyscraper; Tetris pieces fill in the spaces on stepped buildings, destroying levels at a time, and Pong balls transform the Brooklyn Bridge into a pile of pixels. The movie ends, somewhat troublingly, with the entire world turning into one large black cube.

French filmmaker Patrick Jean came up with the idea for the short in 2009 as an homage to the video games of his youth. He shot the film in New York over the course of a few days before returning to Paris where he spent about six months editing it.

Then he posted it online. And that’s when things got interesting.

Much to his astonishment, more than a million people viewed it in the first few days, and the hits just kept tallying. Pretty soon studios were inquiring about buying the rights and turning it into a feature film. One of those Studios was Sony Pictures, and it was offering something none of the others were: Adam Sandler.

“I know that since then he’s made a few movies that were questionable,” Jean said over the phone from California where he’s been living for the past four years. “But at that moment, five years ago, he had a good reputation. He was very interested in the project and very passionate about it.”

That passion gave Jean hope. So often movies get stuck in development purgatory, before being scrapped altogether. But since Sandler seemed so genuinely excited about the movie, Sony seemed like the best choice if Jean ever wanted to see an adaptation of his movie on the big screen.

And it worked. “Pixels” opens this weekend, albeit with a very different feel from the short (although the fantastic Tetris set piece is copied pretty much frame for frame). There are no particularly ominous undertones here, just Sandler and his crew, including Kevin James, per usual, cracking each other up. Sandler plays a former video game champ who has to save the world from alien invaders that are using fighting tactics from Galaga and Centipede, among other retro arcade favorites.

Jean hoped that the feature would be an action comedy for the whole family, along the lines of “Ghostbusters” or “The Last Starfighter” — “those movies that made you feel good in the ’80s and that we kind of lost now,” he said.

After selling the rights to his story, Jean had the opportunity to shadow director Chris Columbus, and he sat in during filming and editing. It was a fun, informative experience for an aspiring feature director. And he has only good things to say about Sandler and his work ethic.

“I know people are kind of accusing Adam Sandler of taking vacations when he shoots, but I can tell you that really wasn’t the case on this movie,” he said. Much of the film was shot at night, on a schedule that had everyone working from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., according to Jean, and Sandler “was there every day working hard.”

And how does Jean feel about the finished product?

“Personally, I loved the work that has been done on the feature in terms of visual effects,” he said. “I think [the movie] is not perfect, but I think it has a heart and I like it. But then, I guess I’m not very objective.”