Development in 2025. In 2010, it was announced that
Adam Sandler had bought the
film rights to French filmmaker Patrick Jean's
video game-themed short film,
Pixels, via his
Happy Madison Productions company, and hired
Tim Herlihy to write the script, a draft Herlihy had said everybody at the studio "hated". Herlihy and Sandler eventually came up with the concept of having
Kevin James star in the film as the president of the United States and incorporated this element in the script. In July 2012, Tim Dowling was hired to rewrite Herlihy's screenplay, with
Seth Gordon being attached as both an executive producer and a possible candidate to direct the film.
Chris Columbus entered talks to direct the film in May 2013. Columbus explained that he first met Sandler to discuss a possible remake of the South Korean film
Hello Ghost, and as Columbus left the meeting, Sandler handed him the script for
Pixels. The script deeply affected Columbus, who considered it "one of the most original ideas I had seen since the
Amblin days" and a good opportunity to harken back to the 1980s
comedy films he worked on. Characters from classic
arcade games such as
Space Invaders,
Pac-Man,
Frogger,
Galaga and
Donkey Kong, among several others, were
licensed for use in
Pixels from video game companies like
Atari,
Taito,
Konami,
Bandai Namco Games and
Nintendo.
Q*bert was coincidentally already owned by
Sony Pictures, as
Columbia Pictures owned
Gottlieb while they developed the original game. There were originally plans to include a scene in which the
Great Wall of China is attacked by the aliens, but the concept was removed from the script in hopes of improving the film's chances in the Chinese market. Nintendo also allowed the filmmakers to feature a
cameo appearance of
Mario in his
Donkey Kong incarnation, though his
Super Mario Bros. incarnation was intended to appear in a
post-credits scene where an alien resembling him is revealed to have survived at the
Washington Monument. Noting the filmmakers could not make the scene work, Columbus decided to have the scene excised from the final film.
Pre-production On February 26, 2014, it was announced that Sandler would play the lead role in the film, while James and
Josh Gad were in early talks to join the cast. On March 28,
Peter Dinklage was in final talks to join the film, playing the fourth and final male lead.
Jennifer Aniston was originally considered for the female lead, but declined due to scheduling conflicts. On April 4,
Michelle Monaghan joined the film to star as the female lead instead. On June 11,
Brian Cox joined the cast as military heavyweight Admiral Porter. The part of "Lady Lisa", the glamorous protagonist of the fictional arcade game
Dojo Quest, was offered to
Elisha Cuthbert, but she turned down the role, which went to
Ashley Benson. On July 9,
Jane Krakowski joined the cast as the First Lady of the United States.
Filming Pixels was
greenlit on a production budget of $135 million, but
Doug Belgrad negotiated it down to $110 million. On March 25, 2014, the Ontario Media Development Corporation confirmed the film would be shot in
Toronto from May 28 to September 9 at
Pinewood Toronto Studios.
Principal photography commenced in Toronto on June 2, 2014 using downtown streets decorated to resemble
New York City. Certain sequences such as the
Pac-Man chase happened at night, and the filmmakers would often close the streets off from traffic at 7:00 PM and redecorate them to resemble New York until it was dark enough, with filming taking place overnight. On July 29, filming took place outside
Markham, Ontario. Filming also took place in the
Rouge Park area, and
extras were dressing in costume at Markham's Rouge Valley Mennonite Church. The
Ontario Government Buildings was doubled to transform into a federal office building in Washington. The actors were seen aiming at aliens, which were added later with
computer-generated imagery. Filming was completed in three months, with twelve hours of shooting each day.
Post-production Most of the visual effects were handled by
Digital Domain and
Sony Pictures Imageworks alongside nine other VFX companies, all under the leadership of supervisor Matthew Butler and producer Denise Davis. Early tests began in October 2013, with most effects work starting after principal photography wrapped in September 2014 and finishing by June 2015. Video game characters would be built out of cubic voxels to resemble the low resolution
pixel-based graphics from their original games, while also emitting light and having
raster scan defects in its animation to make it appear as if they came from a
CRT monitor. Along with the actual
sprite sheets, a major inspiration to integrate the film's conceptualized character designs into the third dimension was the cabinet art, which Imageworks visual effects supervisor Daniel Kramer considered "was the intention the game creators wanted their technology to be, but the technology couldn't live up to creating that". The most complex character to model was Q*bert, who interacted the most with humans and whose head needed to appear circular despite being made out of voxels. A pivotal moment in the film is the Pac-Man sequence, where a giant Pac-Man pursues the protagonists through New York City in Mini Coopers that represent the ghosts from the origin series. The stereo team developed three-dimensional models of the main characters' faces using cyber scans of the actors. The animation team developed voxelized and three-dimensional versions of arcade characters and elements, including
Donkey Kong,
Centipede and Pac-Man, to integrate them into a live-action setting. The voxelization process involved using boxes that changed per frame to mimic the pixel-based graphics, Physical props, such as barrels,
Music The
film score was composed by
Henry Jackman, conducted by
Nick Glennie-Smith and performed by the
Hollywood Studio Symphony. In June 2015,
Waka Flocka Flame released a single entitled "
Game On", featuring
Good Charlotte, which serves as part of the film's soundtrack. Prominent contributions to the soundtrack include
Cheap Trick's "
Surrender" and a rendition of
Queen's "
We Will Rock You" remixed by Helmut VonLichten, the latter of which is featured during the
Donkey Kong scenes. Additionally, a rendition of
Tears for Fears' "
Everybody Wants to Rule the World" is performed by Ludlow near the end of the film.
Varèse Sarabande released the score soundtrack on July 24, 2015, the same day as the film's release. ==Release==