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American McGee, creator of Alice and Alice: Madness Returns, has launched a Kickstarter to fund the acquisition of the film rights to the Alice property and to begin work on animated short films inspired by the Alice: Otherlands concept.
McGee sees Alice’s story as a trilogy, beginning with the first two games and ending with animated adventures in Otherlands.
“The third instalment of the story would find Alice leveraging her super hero-like power to invade the minds of others, hence ‘Otherlands,'” McGee explains. “1875 in London is a time filled with a rich array of characters, each a potential vehicle for Alice’s new adventures – Jules Verne, Jack the Ripper, Darwin, Queen Victoria and a plethora of French artists.
“In this final piece of the story, I imagine we’ll see Alice fighting against a larger conspiracy – one that impacts all the inhabitants of London – battling an organization or bad guy intent on capturing all of society in a nightmarish ‘prison of the mind.’ This is, in effect, a commentary on the soul crushing birth of industrial society… but we can and will give it a fantastic twist.”
McGee adds: “The story ultimately comes down to one of the individual fighting against a corrupt system. Of shining a light on the ultimate origins of psychological horror in our modern society. It’s a question of highlighting the sort of society that creates mental illness, the powerful preying on the weak, subjugation of the masses through deception and manipulation and the driving forces who benefit from this kind of reality. It’s also about finding f’d-up nightmarish creatures and kicking their butts back to hell.”
A successful Kickstarter campaign of $200,000 will result in Spicy Horse acquiring the film rights to Alice and creating at least one Otherlands animated short. Anything beyond that will mean Spicy Horse is closer to realising its big screen dream and creating additional shorts.
McGee says it’s fair to compare his Otherlands idea to that of the Animatrix, with world famous directors and writers having already expressed interest in working on the project.
Fans can pledge $25 or more to receive a digital copy of the game, or $50 for a DVD version. Various other pledge levels are also available.
At the time of writing the Kickstarter had raised $31,187 with 19 days to go.
Source: Kickstarter
