RPGFan News - To the Moon To Be Adapted Into Animated Feature Film

To the Moon To Be Adapted Into Animated Feature Film
Be brought to tears by the story in a whole new medium.
05.18.18 - 2:04 PM

In today's "well, didn't expect that" file, Freebird Games has announced that the 2011 indie darling To the Moon is getting adapted into an animated feature film, a project that has been in planning stages for two years. Kan Gao – creator of To the Moon and its followups, A Bird Story and Finding Paradise – released this video explaining more detail and his thought processes behind an adaption like this:

Some key takeaways from today's press release, if you can't watch a six minute video right now:

The project will be a collaboration between Japan (main production) and China (main funding). First tier Japanese animation production companies are aboard, with specifics to be announced at a future date.

On the funding side, significant budget has been secured for the project, quoted as somewhere above the budget for the animated film production of "Your Name" as reference.

The film project was planned and made possible in partnership with Beijing's Ultron Event Horizon, whose CEO, Danyang Zhao, was responsible for bringing "Your Name" to China.

The original creator of To the Moon, Kan Gao, will play a part in the film script creation process and consultation.

Meanwhile, Freebird Games continues to create narrative-driven games with Kan fully committed. The production for the next Freebird game project has already begun, and is quoted to be "quite bonkers".

There you have it! As Kan explains in the video, a big budget doesn't spell success on its own, but his involvement is what's key here. And it's still really impressive that a game that was mostly a one-person production would get an animated film 6 years later with a budget rivaling one of the most notable recent animated movies to hit theaters.

If you have not played To the Moon, it comes highly recommended. And I say that on behalf of myself personally, and several of the RPGFan staff. It's a game that, while only loosely a "game" in terms of interaction, hits all the right notes when it comes to story, music, and presentation. It got me right in the feels, and while it's not a long game, I couldn't put it down and played through it in two sittings. It made enough of an impact on us here that we compiled our coverage into a hub page back in 2012, so we encourage you to dig in:

To the Moon is available on Steam, and right now, can be bought for the criminally-low price of $4.99 USD (but pay the extra $1.25 and get the soundtrack too). We'll keep you updated on more happenings with the To the Moon film as we learn more!