What if John Milton's Paradise Lost was a science fiction epic about aliens on other worlds and mankind's fight for survival?

That's the premise behind The Garden, a six-minute proof-of-concept that was posted to Vimeo and picked up by a subsidiary of Warner Bros. called Polymorphic Pictures, just three days later. Polymorphic hopes to turn The Garden into a major new film franchise.

The short film was written and directed by E.B. Rhee, a first-time filmmaker who also produced and created the visual effects. The resulting video plays like an extended movie trailer, though it gives away the entire story, which has a nicely-done twist at the end.

The post-apocalyptic story goes that humanity is an endangered species because the sun is dying. So a group of explorers are sent out to find a new world that mankind can rebuild on. But in the deepness of space, they find a lot more than they bargained for.

The entire thing was made for just $30,000, which is impressive given the amount of visual effects and the variety of shots involved. Rhee notes that this was possible because most of the cast and crew contributed their talents to the production for free.

The Garden's Hollywood deal is the latest example of a hot trend in tinseltown, where aspiring filmmakers put together short films or proof-of-concept videos and post them online in the hopes that bigwig production companies will discover them. Rhee has reportedly already written a full-length screenplay, which Warner Bros. acquired as part of the deal.

h/t The Verge

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