Robopocalypse

[Welcome to the Sci-Fi Lunch Break, where we'll be supplying you with a cool bit of audio/visual goodness to break up the monotony of the work day. You bring the turkey on rye, we'll bring you something out of this world to watch while you eat it.]

In place of the disastrous 2012 coming out today, I figured we should offer up a take on the end of the world that you might actually want to see. Such is Panic Attack, a five minute short film from Argentina that shows off what happens when a fleet of giant, slow-moving automatons invade a major city. It's a fun, resourceful little short set to the most memorable bit of music from 28 Days Later that should land fans of both robots and the apocalypse in high heaven.

Check it out:

I feel like the last three years have seen a spike in studios snatching up unpublished manuscripts for film development. I understand calling dibs on the rights to the next work from a novelist like Stephen King or Dan Brown, whose name recognition all but guarantees a nice return on investment, but I am a little puzzled at the transition from picking up spec scripts to picking up spec novels. Then again, I haven't been privy to the same information executives at DreamWorks have; their fast-tracking of Daniel H. Wilson's aways-off novel Robopocalypse probably makes a whole lot of sense to those who have taken an early look at it.

Or, perhaps more accurately, it makes a lot of sense to someone who looked at last summer's box office chart. Terminator Salvation and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen proved that romping, stomping robots are always kings of the opening weekend -- and even Duncan Jones' Moon proved that name-recognition wasn't a must and that robots don't have to be gigantic and people-hating to be profitable. Whatever the motivation, Robopocalypse "cautionary tale of man versus machine" has been all lubed up for the development process at DreamWorks, according to The Hollywood Reporter.