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Rob McLellan's Sci-Fi Short 'ABE' Heads to MGM as Feature Project

by Alex Billington
August 21, 2013
Source: Deadline

Another successful studio purchase for a fantastic sci-fi short film we featured earlier this year. In late April we posted the short film ABE from British filmmaker Rob McLellan, telling the story of a malicious but seemingly well-intentioned robot serial killer. Now, four months later, Deadline is reporting that McLellan has sold the rights to a feature version of the story to MGM, who will develop the project with Kevin Misher (Public Enemies, Carrie) and Steve Tzirlin (working on Ruin & R'ha) producing. The feature version of ABE will likely tell the complete story of ABE and how he came to work for the family he talks about in the short.

Rob McLellan is a visual effects artist making the leap into filmmaking by writing/directing ABE. McLellan also has another spec script called Strings about time-traveling thieves that is being pitched, likely along with this. No other info was provided about the MGM acquisition aside from them developing the feature version of ABE. This is the latest short to follow in the footsteps of sci-fi films like Ruin and R'ha and True Skin that are being scooped by studios after they debut online. The subtleties in the emotional storytelling and the visual effects impressed me the most when I first came across this. Here's the original short film:

We'll keep an eye out for additional updates on the ABE feature and anything else McLellan gets involved in.

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