Epic Games gets serious about filmmaking. The company behind the hit game Fortnite and the engine that drives it, Unreal, has awarded an award to the production of animated features Gilgamesh. This is the first known award to a film.
Here are the details:
- The film is based on the Email from Gilgamesh, an ancient Mesopotamian epic poem and cornerstone of world literature. It tells of the mythological hero Gilgamesh’s ‘quest for immortality and his rivalry with friendship with the wild man Enkidu’, according to Deadline, who first reported the news.
- Hook Up Animation, a studio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, will animate the film and include Unreal in its pipeline. The studio’s credits include Winnie the Pooh: ABC’s for Disney TV Animation, Xilam Animation’s Lucky Luke, and locations for customers, including Cartoon Network, MTV and Turner.
- Argentine documentary filmmaker Tomas Lipgot is the director. His company Duermevela is working with Epic and Hook Up on the project, as well as the international sales and remake firm Filmsharks (which is also based in Buenos Aires).
- Epic is hosting the award through Megagrants, the $ 100 million fund it launched in 2019 to support projects using Unreal Engine. Hundreds of projects have already been given to projects in games, entertainment, education and elsewhere. Toronto-based digital content company Relish Interactive, which is expanding its animation page, is among the recipients.
- Unreal is at the heart of the real-time rendering revolution in animation and vfx. It is widely used in virtual production, the set of techniques by which filmmakers can visualize and adapt synthetic elements throughout production. Some use the software to insert real-time puppetry into their animation pipeline.