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Pixels
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Chris Columbus
Screenplay by	Tim Herlihy Timothy Dowling
Story by	Tim Herlihy
Based on	Pixels by Patrick Jean
Produced by	Adam Sandler Chris Columbus Mark Radcliffe Allen Covert
Starring	Adam Sandler Kevin James Michelle Monaghan Peter Dinklage Josh Gad Brian Cox
Cinematography	Amir Mokri
Edited by	Hughes Winborne
Music by	Henry Jackman
Production companies	Columbia Pictures Happy Madison Productions 1492 Pictures LStar Capital China Film Co., Ltd. Film Croppers Entertainment
Distributed by	Sony Pictures Releasing
Release date	July 24, 2015 (2015-07-24) (United States)
Running time	106 minutes
Countries	United States China
Language	English
Budget	$88–129 million
Box office	$244.9 million

Pixels is a 2015 science fiction comedy film directed by Chris Columbus and written by Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling. Loosely adapted from the 2010 short film Pixels by Patrick Jean (who serves as an executive producer on the film), the film stars Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan, Peter Dinklage, Josh Gad and Brian Cox. Combining animated video game characters and visual effects, the film involves an alien force misinterpreting video feeds of classic arcade games as a declaration of war, to which they respond by attacking Earth with technological recreations of icons from the games. The President of the United States assembles a team of former arcade champions to lead the planet's defense.

Following the success of Patrick Jean's short film Pixels, Sandler pursued a feature adaptation, initially hiring Tim Herlihy to draft the screenplay in 2010. After initial drafts were poorly received, Sandler and Herlihy reworked the concept to feature James as the U.S. President, a unique twist that led to Tim Dowling's involvement for further revisions in 2012. Columbus, drawn to the script's originality and its nostalgic nod to 1980s arcade culture, signed on to direct in 2013. Production began in 2014 with a $110 million budget, filming in Toronto, which was transformed to resemble New York and Washington, D.C. Visual effects were led by Digital Domain and Sony Pictures Imageworks, creating characters out of voxel-based pixels to emulate 1980s game graphics, with CRT-style imperfections.

Columbia Pictures theatrically released Pixels in the United States on July 24, 2015. It grossed $245 million on an $88–129 million budget and received negative reviews. It was nominated for the 36th Golden Raspberry Awards including Worst Picture.

Plot

At an arcade in 1982, with his friend Will Cooper, 13-year-old Sam Brenner discovers he can master the games by spotting patterns. Participating in a video game championship, he seemingly loses in a Donkey Kong match with obnoxious arcade player Eddie "The Fireblaster" Plant. Videocassette footage of the event is included in a time capsule launched into space.

In the present, Brenner is an electronics installer while Will is the President of the United States. Andersen Air Force Base in Guam is besieged by extraterrestrials in the form of Galaga. Will summons Brenner and lieutenant colonel Violet van Patten to the White House. Seeing video footage of the attack and meeting with fellow gamer Ludlow "The Wonder Kid" Lamonsoff, Brenner deduces the aliens have mistaken the videocassette as a declaration of war and are attacking Earth with arcade game icons. The aliens challenge Earth to a best-of-five battle, claiming Earth has lost the first match. The next attack is on the Taj Mahal in the form of Arkanoid, but Brenner and Will cannot persuade people and Earth loses the second match. Brenner and Ludlow train Navy SEALs to play the games while Violet develops effective energy weapons. The team heads to London, where the aliens attack Hyde Park in the form of Centipede, but are defeated by Brenner and Ludlow. The aliens send a trophy in the form of the Duck Hunt dog.

Eddie is freed from prison to assist in New York City, where the team fights in Mini Coopers as ghosts against a giant Pac-Man. Franchise creator Toru Iwatani tries to reason with it but Pac-Man bites his hand. Brenner narrowly beats Pac-Man and wins the game with Q*Bert as a trophy, before the aliens accuse Earth of cheating, meaning Earth fails the challenge. Violet's son Matty discovers that Eddie used a cheat code written on his glasses, like he did during the 1982 Donkey Kong match. Eddie flees and the aliens abduct Matty.

The aliens attack Washington, D.C. with an army of video game characters. One attacks Ludlow as Lady Lisa, his crush, but he persuades her to join him. A repentant Eddie returns to the fight. Brenner, Violet, and Will are summoned to the alien mothership for a last chance to save Earth by facing their leader as Donkey Kong. The trio is placed on the starting level with Donkey Kong and the captives at the top level. Noticing the random pattern of barrels and fireballs, Brenner loses hope until Matty reveals Eddie's cheating. Realizing he is the world's best Donkey Kong player, Brenner regains his spirit and defeats Donkey Kong. The aliens leave Earth.

The team is hailed as heroes and Will negotiates a peace agreement with the aliens. Eddie apologizes to Brenner for cheating and acknowledges him as the best Donkey Kong player. Ludlow is devastated that Lisa is gone, so Q*Bert transforms its likeness to Lisa. Brenner and Violet start a romantic relationship while Eddie meets Serena Williams and Martha Stewart. The aliens restore everything on Earth, including Iwatani's hand. A year later, Ludlow and Lisa are married and have Q*Bert-like children.

Cast

• Adam Sandler as Sam Brenner, a former arcade video game champion, Cooper's childhood friend and the leader of the Arcaders.
  • Anthony Ippolito as the young Brenner.
• Kevin James as Will "Chewie" Cooper, the disgraced President of the United States, Brenner's childhood friend and a member of the Arcaders.
  • Jared Riley as the young Cooper.
• Michelle Monaghan as Lieutenant Colonel Violet van Patten, a unique weapons developer and specialist for the military and a member of the Arcaders.
• Peter Dinklage as Eddie "The Fireblaster" Plant, Brenner's former rival and a member of the Arcaders. The character was partially inspired by Billy Mitchell, a real-world arcade champion who became well known in the 1980s and 1990s for setting scoring records in Pac-Man and Donkey Kong and was later accused of cheating.
  • Andrew Bambridge as the young Eddie.
• Josh Gad as Ludlow "The Wonder Kid" Lamonsoff, a conspiracy-theory-obsessed genius with poor social skills and a member of the Arcaders.
  • Jacob Shinder as the young Ludlow.
• Brian Cox as Admiral James Porter, a military heavyweight.
• Sean Bean as Corporal Hill.
• Jane Krakowski as Jane Cooper, the First Lady of the United States and Cooper's wife.
• Affion Crockett as Sergeant Dylan Cohan, a soldier present during the Guam attack.
• Ashley Benson as Lady Lisa, the glamorous protagonist of the fictional arcade game Dojo Quest.
• Matt Lintz as Matty van Patten, Violet's son.
• Lainie Kazan as Mickey Lamonsoff, Ludlow's grandmother.

Denis Akiyama portrays Tōru Iwatani, the creator of the Pac-Man franchise, while the real Iwatani has a cameo role as a repairman. Fiona Shaw plays the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Production

Development

The film is based on Patrick Jean's video-game-themed short film, Pixels. In 2010, Adam Sandler hired Tim Herlihy to write the script, a draft that Herlihy had said that everybody at the studio "hated". Eventually, Herlihy and Sandler came up with the concept of having Kevin James be the President of the United States and rewrote the film incorporating this element. In July 2012, Tim Dowling was hired to rewrite the film. Seth Gordon was attached as executive producer and as a possible candidate to direct the film. Chris Columbus became involved in the project in May 2013. Columbus said he first met Sandler to discuss a possible remake of Hello Ghost, and as he left the meeting, Columbus was handed a script for Pixels. The script 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 comedies 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 the film.

There were originally plans to include a scene where the Great Wall of China is attacked, but the concept was removed from the script in hopes of improving the film's chances in the Chinese market.

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 also 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. On June 11, Brian Cox joined the cast and plays 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

The film was greenlit on a production budget of $135 million, which Doug Belgrad negotiated down to $110 million. On March 25, 2014, the Ontario Media Development Corporation confirmed that the film would be shot in Toronto from May 28 to September 9 at Pinewood Toronto Studios.

Principal photography on the film commenced in Toronto on June 2, 2014, using downtown streets decorated to resemble New York City. Given sequences such as the Pac-Man chase happened at night, often the filmmakers would close the streets off from traffic at 7 PM and redecorate them to resemble New York until it was dark enough, filming from 9:30 PM up to 5:30 AM. On July 29, filming was taking place outside of Markham, Ontario. Filming was also done in the Rouge Park area, and extras were dressing in costume at Markham's Rouge Valley Mennonite Church. On August 4, actors Josh Gad, Peter Dinklage, and Ashley Benson were spotted in Toronto filming scenes for the film on Bay Street, which was transformed into a city block in Washington, D.C., and littered with wrecked vehicles and giant holes in the pavement. The Ontario Government Buildings was doubled to transform into a federal office building in Washington. Actors were aiming at aliens, which were added later with computer-generated imagery. On August 26, 2014, filming took place in Cobourg. Filming was completed in three months, with twelve hours of shooting each day.

Post-production

Most of the film's visual effects were handled by Digital Domain and Sony Pictures Imageworks, with nine other VFX companies playing supporting roles, all under the leadership of supervisor Matthew Butler and producer Denise Davis. Early tests began in October 2013, with the majority of the effects work starting after principal photography wrapped in September 2014 and finishing by June 2015. The video game characters would be built out of cubic voxels to resemble the low resolution pixel-based graphics from their origin games, while also emitting light and having raster scan defects in its animation to appear more like 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 characters to model were Q*Bert, which interacted the most with humans and looked around despite being made out of voxels. A pivotal moment in the film is the Pac-Man chase scene, where a giant Pac-Man pursues the protagonists through the city in mini-cars, symbolizing the ghosts from the original game. The stereo team developed 3D models of the main characters' faces using cyber scans of the actors.

The animation team developed voxelized 3D versions of classic arcade characters, including Donkey Kong, Centipede, and Pac-Man, to integrate them into live-action settings. These characters were made of cubic voxels, allowing them to appear pixelated, consistent with their 1980s video game origins. The voxelization process involved using boxes that changed per frame to mimic the pixel-based graphics, and was particularly challenging for characters with complex movements, such as Donkey Kong.

Pac-Man's animation required the voxelization to allow light emission, which was adjusted to ensure the character’s spherical shape remained visible. Donkey Kong's larger voxel size made head movements more difficult to control, necessitating a localized voxelization approach to maintain visual coherence. Lighting also played a crucial role, with Pac-Man casting light onto the environment, while Donkey Kong emitted less light, affecting their integration into scenes. Physical props were constructed for key sequences to provide actors with reference points for interaction. For example, barrels were built for scenes involving Donkey Kong, and a Mini Cooper was modified with yellow light panels to simulate Pac-Man's lighting effects during a chase scene. Practical effects were combined with digital enhancements to replace or augment live-action elements.

The team faced challenges with the Donkey Kong set, where reflections on the red stage and green screen required more digital replacements than anticipated. For a scene featuring Max Headroom, Digital Domain used its proprietary MOVA Direct Drive technology to capture and translate actor Matt Frewer's facial performance into a digital format, aiming for a realistic portrayal consistent with the character’s original appearance. Adjustments were made to ensure the characters retained their iconic movements while interacting believably with the live-action world. The animation team focused on keyframe animation for most sequences, using simulation only for specific effects like flames emitted by Donkey Kong.

Music

The score was composed by Henry Jackman, who had previously scored Disney's Wreck-It Ralph. 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.

Release

Theatrical

The film was originally scheduled to be released on May 15, 2015, but on August 12, 2014, the release date was pushed to July 24, 2015. In the United States and Canada, it was released in the Dolby Vision format in Dolby Cinema, the first film from Sony to be released in that format.

Marketing

The first trailer was released on March 19, 2015, and received 34.3 million global views in 24 hours, breaking Sony's previous record held by The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (22 million views in 2014). The second trailer was released on June 13, 2015. Upon release of the trailer, similarities were noted between it and a segment of the Futurama episode "Anthology of Interest II".

Sony created an "Electric Dreams Factory Arcade" with many of the arcade games featured in the film for various fan conventions, such as the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con and the 2015 Wizard World Philadelphia. In Brazil, a promotional video was released on July 2, 2015, showing Adam Sandler interacting with Monica and Jimmy Five from local comic Monica's Gang.

Copyright takedown controversy

Columbia Pictures hired Entura International to send Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notices to websites hosting user-uploaded videos of the film. The company filed DMCA takedown notices indiscriminately against several Vimeo videos containing the word "Pixels" in the title, including the 2010 award-winning short film the film is based on, the official film trailer, a 2006 independently produced Cypriot film uploaded by the Independent Museum of Contemporary Art, a 2010 university work by a student of the Bucharest National University of Arts, a royalty-free stock footage clip and an independently produced project. The takedown notice sent by Entura stated that the works infringe a copyright they had the right to enforce; once the notice was made public, it was withdrawn.

Home media

Pixels was released on Blu-ray (3D and 2D) and DVD on October 27, 2015, by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. This release sold $12.4 million in DVD sales and $7.4 million in Blu-ray sales.

Reception

Box office

Pixels grossed $78.7 million in North America and $164.9 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $244.9 million. Reports of the production budget of the film range from $88 million to $129 million, with Sony Pictures officially stating the cost as $110 million. The film received tax rebates of $19 million for filming in Canada.

In the United States and Canada, Pixels opened alongside Paper Towns, Southpaw, and The Vatican Tapes, in 3,723 theaters. Its release date caused it to face competition from the holdovers Ant-Man and Minions, all of which were projected to earn around $20 million. It made $1.5 million from its Thursday night showings at 2,776 theaters and topped the box office on its opening day, earning $9.2 million. Through its opening weekend it grossed $24 million from 3,723 theaters, debuting at second place at the box office, behind Ant-Man.

Critical response

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 18% based on 208 reviews; the average rating is 4/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Much like the worst arcade games from the era that inspired it, Pixels has little replay value and is hardly worth a quarter." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 27 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film one star out of four, calling it "a 3D metaphor for Hollywood's digital assault on our eyes and brains" and deeming it "relentless and exhausting". In Salon.com, Andrew O'Hehir called the film "another lazy Adam Sandler exercise in 80s Nostalgia", as well as "an overwhelmingly sad experience" characterized by "soul-sucking emptiness". The Guardian called it "casually sexist, awkwardly structured, bro-centric" and warned, "Pity the poor souls who go into the comedy blockbuster thinking they've signed up to watch The Lego Movie by way of Independence Day. They'll be disappointed". Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News gave the film no stars and wrote, "Someone please retire Adam Sandler. Pixels is the last straw for this has-been...Every joke is forced, every special effect is un-special...The dipstick Pixels is about as much fun as a joystick and not even half as smart". "It manages to achieve the weird effect of feeling overlong and choppy at the same time, like someone edited the film with a pair of garden shears," wrote Randy Cordova in The Arizona Republic.

Marjorie Baumgarten of The Austin Chronicle said the film is "flat-footed and grows tedious after the first hour" but praised the 3D effects which "enhances the action". "Everything is wrong here," wrote Megan Garber in The Atlantic Monthly, "cinematically, creatively, maybe even morally. Because Pixels is one of those bad movies that isn't just casually bad, or shoot-the-moon bad, or too-close-to-the-sun bad, or actually kind of delightfully bad. It is tediously bad. It is bafflingly bad. It is, in its $90 million budget and 104-minute run time, wastefully bad. Its badness seems to come not from failure in the classic sense—a goal set, and unachieved—but from something much worse: laziness. Ambivalence. A certain strain of cinematic nihilism". Peter Sobczynski, writing for RogerEbert.com, called the premise promising but the execution "abysmal".

Conversely, Katie Walsh, reviewing for the Chicago Tribune, was more positive, saying "despite unfortunate shortcomings, Pixels has its funny and fresh moments, thanks in large part to the supporting comic actors and inventive special effects".

Accolades

Notes

1. Also for The Cobbler
2. Also for The Wedding Ringer

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External links

• Official website
• Pixels at IMDb

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