Ruairi Robinson To Direct 'The Fallen'

If you don't already know Ruairi Robinson's name, go back through our archive of previous reports on the young director to check out his short films like The Silent City and Blinky, then come back to this announcement of a new feature for which he's been tapped to direct. In November of last year the director was attached to a sci-fi thriller script called The Animators. Now he has been announced as the director of another sci-fi film called The Fallen.

Variety reports that the story involves the aftermath of an alien ship crash-landing in Russia. "When it creates a 400-mile electronic dead-zone, international special ops teams are sent in to neutralize it." Reminds me of an action-oriented take on the Andrei Tarkovsky sci-fi classic Stalker.  The Russian setting and 'dead zone' naturally suggest Stalker, but if we ever see The Fallen I suspect that any real similarity between the two films will end up being superficial at best.Andrew Will wrote the original draft of the script; he's the same guy who wrote the script Archangel, which has Tron Legacy director Joseph Kosinski attached to direct.

I like the sound of this film a bit more than The Animators, in part because the basic concept here seems like it would play to strengths Ruairi Robinson already demonstrated in his short The Silent City. (Watch that one below, if you haven't seen it.) Given that we haven't yet seen him direct a feature (he was once tapped to make Akira, but that obviously didn't happen) both projects are unknown quantities to a certain degree, and The Fallen sounds like it has more potential to be a solid feature debut.