Alchemy, formerly Millennium Entertainment, has acquired the con artist comedy Moonwalkers at the 2015 South by Southwest Festival. The movie marks the directorial debut of Antoine Bardou-Jacquet and stars Ron Perlman (Hellboy), Rupert Grint (Harry Potter), and Robert Sheehan (The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones).
Moonwalkers takes place in an alternate history where Apollo 11 never landed on the moon and the television broadcast of the landing was directed by 2001: A Space Odyssey director Stanley Kubrick. Perlman plays a CIA agent looking for Kubrick in 1960s London, who is forced to team with an unreliable rock band manager (Grint) to work the biggest con of all time.
Con movies have been moderately successful as of late; the magician heist movie Now You See Me was a surprise hit in 2012 and is getting a sequel, while more recently, the Will Smith caper Focus has also done well internationally.
Alchemy’s Bill Lee praised the movie and was excited about the acquisition, saying, “Moonwalkers is a wildly imaginative, one-of-a-kind movie. Antoine-Bardou-Jacquet has crafted something truly original that we look forward to bringing to a wide audience.”