‘Splice’ Meets ‘Terminator: Salvation’ In The First Trailer for ‘Jim’

Last year, Niell Blomkamp’s District 9 changed how major studios looked at small science fiction projects. Before, ideas like “aliens in a dystopian future” were mostly reserved for direct-to-video productions. But now more and more studios are investing in scripts like these, hoping to ride the Avatar or District 9 success. Enter Jim.

The story behind Jim can be considered a little complicated, to say the least, so try to stay with the official synopsis, because it takes an interesting turn in the middle.

Being steadily crushed under the weight of debt, unemployment, and increasing isolation, Jim reaches a breaking point. Over a game of solitary Russian roulette he contemplates an unspeakable act of violence as a way of leaving his mark. He is stopped short by a vision of his deceased wife who convinces him that he should instead focus his remaining resources into an act of creation. Armed with his wife’s frozen eggs and a new resolve, Jim secures the services of a large biotech firm to help him create an heir who will be engineered to overcome the obstacles of common men.

Meanwhile in the distant future Niskaa, the leader of a group of genetically modified beings, controls a race of worker clones in a super-industrialized, post-human Earth. As he tries to restore his decrepit empire he comes face to face with a young clone that shows an unprecedented capacity for reason and empathy. Somehow connected to Jim via dreams, the clone manifests secrets of Nature that Niskaa has not accounted for…

The film comes from first-time writer/director Jeremy Morris-Burke, and looks like it could just be a new era for independent science fiction films. Check out the first trailer after the jump. Catch Jim in NY and LA theaters on October 8th and 16th.