'Pixels' Becoming Reality (Movie Reality... For Now)

Just over a month ago, the internet wires lit up with praise for Pixels, Patrick Jean's two-and-a-half minute short about old school video game characters attacking Manhattan, turning it into pixels. It had to be expected the internet would like such a thing--literally anything involving a retro video game in a slightly revised context is popular on the internet--but you know who else liked it who isn't officially counted in the broad category of "the internet"? Adam Sandler. According to Heat Vision, Sandler saw the short and decided (probably in the voice of Opera Man, Waterboy, or a variation thereof), "It's time to make a feature-length film out of this thing! Ah-doob-ah-doo!":

The French filmmaker behind “Pixels,” Patrick Jean, has teamed up with Adam Sandler’s production banner Happy Madison to develop a big-screen take. The team is in talks with Columbia, where Happy Madison has its first-look deal, to set up the project at the studio.

The project is still in the early stages and no writer is on board but the plan is to make a “Ghostbusters”-style action comedy in which characters come out of a video game to wreak havoc in the real world.

And for those of you who like your news in the form of increasingly obscure television references: Adam Sandler is producing a film that will be that episode of Futurama where old video game characters attack the city meets the concept of villains emerging from a video game, like in the episode of Nightmares where that happens to Emilio Estevez. OK?

Here's the Pixels short, in case you missed it: