Multiplex 10: The Animated Short launched on Kickstarter Monday and raised $7,500 — half of its goal — from just over two hundred backers in its first twenty-four hours.
Multiplex 10 is an eleven-minute animated prequel/reboot of Gordon McAlpin’s comic strip Multiplex — which also concluded on Monday after a twelve-year run and focused on the staff of a movie theater through the last twelve years. The short turns back the clock on the characters to see how Kurt and Jason met and fell in movie-love, and although it can stand on its own, it is conceived as the pilot for an ongoing series.
Part sitcom-style workplace comedy, part movie commentary, and part decade-long coming-of-age epic, the Multiplex comic strip has been described as “Clerks in a movie theater (Newsarama), with a “smart and human take on geek culture [that] is brutal, nuanced, and damn funny” (Gene Ha, Top Ten, Mae), and the animated pilot will continue that tradition, while taking the characters into new, stranger territory.
The comic strip Multiplex ran from July 10, 2005 and ended on April 10, 2017. The series focused on a horror movie buff Kurt and a high-brow film snob Jason, who waged a never-ending battle against the terrible movies and even worse customers infesting their movie theater, the Multiplex 10 Cinemas. Over the years, the characters aged and grew up (slightly) as the movie theater industry experienced its most significant change since the adoption of sound film: the coming of digital cinema.
The animated short is co-written by Gordon McAlpin and web series veteran Dana Luery Shaw (Personal Space), and will be directed and animated by McAlpin. Film composer Tangelene Bolton (American Zealot, Jem and the Holograms) will provide an original score.
For more information about the Kickstarter project, visit: www.kickstarter.com
More information about Multiplex 10, its cast, and its crew can be found at www.multiplex10.com.
