Having been recently teased on social media by Arrow star Stephen Amell and The Flash‘s former-Firestorm Robbie Amell, the ten minute short film Code 8 has been released on YouTube. The short also features actors Sung Kang (Han in the Fast & Furious franchise) and Aaron Abrams. Directed by Jeff Chan from a script by Chris Paré, who previously collaborated on the short Call of Duty: Operation Kingfish, Code 8 is a sci-fi short set in Lincoln City, where 4% of the population has special abilities, most of whom live in poverty. Robbie Amell and Abrams are a pair of unemployed day laborers just trying to make ends meet while living under the radar of police drones and laws that regulate the use of powers by those who possess them. Kang is one of the human cops who stops the pair after police surveillance detect an act of vandalism. Things escalate quickly from there.
The look and feel of the short evokes District 9, the sci-fi film that used alien resettlement in South Africa as a lens through which that team approached apartheid. Code 8 seems to be attempting to do the same for socioeconomic inequality in America. Based on what I witnessed from the short, I am interested in seeing what the production team has in store for this property.
I say that because in addition to the short, the production team behind Code 8 has launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise $200,000 to finance a feature film based off of the short. At the time of this writing, the campaign has earned around $60,000 in its first six hours or so. Yes, some of that money is mine. You can watch Code 8 below (a word of caution for strong language and violence) and, if so inclined, donate to help fund the project at the Code 8 campaign page.
