Announcing Sci-Exploitation: Escape From Planet Omega-12
An animated adventure for adults, created to revitalize modern entertainment.
Come be a part of the action by clicking HERE.
My name is Christopher Cooksey, sometimes known as Christopher Moonlight. I’m a special effects artist, animator, indie film producer, and director of The Quantum Terror, which is streaming right now on Tubi, Filmzie, and coming soon to Amazon Prime and I’m looking for one-thousand true sci-fi/fantasy fans to help me change the face of entertainment.
Hear me out.
My next project is an animated sci-fi film called Escape From Planet Omega-12 but before I tell you about that, I want to talk about why I’m doing it. This isn’t just another film project for me, nor do I want you to see it as one.
Stories matter. Beauty matters.
Storytelling is the dialogue we have with ourselves, an exchange of ideas to be considered within the context of our culture. If we don’t tell new stories we will lose our agency. We will be forever bound to consume a kind of intellectual antimatter that studios and ideologues alike try to pass off as storytelling disguised as properties that we recognize from our past but don’t have their substance. As a result, the more we consume the less value we get until instead of sustaining and renewing us, it has us slipping into a kind of soulless anemia. Eventually, it just becomes poison.
Sure, every once in a while we may get something approximating good quality but before you know it the powers that be have seized possession of whatever that is because it’s doing well and thinking that they’ve found the next thing they can make all about them, and once again pull the rug out from under us.
They don’t know how to be creative, they just know how to squeeze things dry until there’s nothing left to get from them. The land is barren, the wells are dry, and they’ve chased away the artists who would know how to bring vitality back to either.
This goes far beyond show business. The people running things just don’t know how to be creative but they think they can make up for that with their charts, accounting, and following empty fads. There’s nothing anyone can do about that but it doesn’t mean we as independent creators can’t infuse the zeitgeist of entertainment with some much-needed fertile material.
What’s the Plan?
I’m not just talking about creating new properties nor do I have any illusions that I’m going to change the landscape of pop culture on my own. There are already amazing talents leading the charge on that front, who have inspired me. Comic book creators like Eric July, Ethan Van Sciver, and Ya Boi Zack have set an example that I intend to somewhat follow regarding the creation of a small but sustainable business model. I frankly don’t understand why more independent filmmakers aren’t aspiring to emulate them. I’m also very enamored with the practices of B-movie legend Roger Corman, Full Moon Features’ Charles Band, and the folks over at studioADI who have produced their own films after working decades in the industry. They’ve shown me that if you keep your budgets low and cater to an audience that truly appreciates what you do, you can be authentic in your creativity as well as successful. I’m just the next guy to throw my hat into the ring with them.
So, what makes Sci-Exploitation special, and what is Escape From Planet Omega-12?
In a nutshell, it’s an animated story that I want to bring to life, unconstrained by the limitations or censorship that a Hollywood studio would put on it, using the best elements of movies and shows we love from the past, but also using all the advances in consumer and open source technology I can gather to blend them together in a way that audiences have never seen before.
Okay, so, here’s the pitch.
Tera, the beautiful lone survivor of a doomed space mission is marooned on a hostile alien planet, teeming with bizarre and dangerous life forms, with only the scant contents of her escape pod to sustain her. Aided by her small robot assistant and a gelatinous entity that has absorbed the consciousness of her dead husband, she must learn to survive in a world never meant for humanity and escape, before she is found out by a secret enemy, who is using killer robots and drones to hunt for her.
For years I’ve worked on independent projects for myself, other producers, theater, and music videos, bringing to bear all the inspiration I’ve taken in from animation, practical effects, and comic books. From the miniature backgrounds of the old Fleischer Popeye cartoons, the disciplined action of Samurai Jack, the puppets of The Dark Crystal movie and TV series, the unapologetically brutal and sensual art of Frank Frazetta, and all the classic sci-fi that made my childhood, I learned that there’s one constant that marks them all. They pushed the envelope of their medium to bring us something beautiful that fills us with transcendent wonder.
This story will combine practical effects miniature sets, puppets, CGI, and hand-drawn animation to create a stunning, sexy, action-packed visual style never seen in a movie before that bucks the trends and flies in the face of what’s thought of to be socially acceptable.
It’s the first part of what I’m calling my Sci-Exploitation Anthology, a collection of continuing sci-fi stories from shorts, to features, to ongoing series that will continue on indefinitely depending on their success.
How To Be a Part of It…
If this sounds like something you believe in, that you want to see injected into our storytelling landscape, and you want to help make a difference, then join me on this journey… or if you can’t then share this. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, Substack, and other social media. Let people know you’re excited about this and tell them why they should be excited about it, too.
Let’s make this happen together. Thank you.
Christopher “Moonlight” Cooksey
Here’s our pitch video…
And here’s an animatic of how our opening scene might go…