Cosmoball

Dzhanik Fayziev, writer and director of Cosmoball, at Kinotavr in 2016.

In August 2014, Dzhanik Fayziev announced that he is planning to film a blockbuster titled Cosmoball about a Russian superhero fighting alien invaders, inspired by the comics of the Marvel Universe, and not about the new work of Russian directors who have decided to take the superhero cinema to a completely new level, Russia Today reports.

Fayziev clarified that, according to the plot, people evolved and became part of a galactic society fighting creatures that look like "super-reactive turboballs", therefore battles with them resemble football, hence the name of the film. The nickname of the superhero is Lev Yashin.[11][12]

Producing was done by Dzhanik Fayziev's company Bonanza Studio, which had success with the films The Turkish Gambit (2005 film) and Furious (2017 film), a historical fantasy film. He is also the co-producer and co-author of the script.[13]

Executive producing of the film was entrusted to Sergey Selyanov (ru), director of the CTB Film Company. The preliminary development of the project took almost 5 years.

Maksim Osadchy known for his work on Stalingrad (2013 film) and The Duelist (2016 film), was hired as cinematographer. The authors of the script were Twister Murchison, Drew Row, and Andrey Rubanov.[14]

In order to promote the film, main broadcasting companies of Russia - Channel One, Russia-1 and CTC Media joined forces.[15]

The main roles in the film were performed by sports-men instead of professional actors. Lead actor Yevgeny Romantsov graduated from the Moscow State Academy of Physical Culture (majoring in theory and methodology of football and hockey).[16] Romantsov previously took part in productions of the Gogol Center. Russian actress Viktoriya Agalakova (née Glukhikh) studied ballet, acrobatics, and choreography, which proved to be useful when filming dynamic scenes on suspensions. Agalakova works at the Saint Petersburg State Theater of Musical Comedy. They were accompanied by аctress Maria Lisovaya, a graduate of the Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute.

The fourth unknown actress who joined them was the winner of international competitions in rhythmic gymnastics Yelizaveta "Liza" Taychenacheva, an actress who previously competed in biathlon and the Children's teams of Youth Sports Schools "Youth of Moscow".[17] They were all cast because of their sporting past.

They were joined by famous actors such as Yevgeny Mironov,[18] Elena Yakovleva, Mikhail Yefremov, and others.

Director Dzhanik Fayziev's film is one of the most ambitious, expensive, and high-tech projects of all that is being shot in Russia. On the walls of the pavilion, there is a blue chroma key on which backgrounds will be drawn. In one frame with live actors - virtual characters, drawn from scratch or with the help of digital capture technology acting game motion capture.

Principal photography commenced in the scenery on the territory of Mosfilm Studios in Moscow, and lasted from June 2 to mid-September 2017.

On an area of over 3,500 square meters built transforming the scenery of the streets and interiors of post-apocalyptic Moscow, with thousands of props created by the artists specifically for the film. In the shooting involved up to 500 actors for crowd scenes, and for each a unique costume was stitched. In the Studio, costume designers were delivered 1.5 tons of items lightweight summer clothing from India were delivered.

When working with images, sophisticated prosthetics were used: one of the characters, Valaya — is in a suit covered with silicone pads throughout her whole body. This took seven hours to create for the make-up-artist.[19][20]

For the post-production of visual effects is engaged in the studio Main Road Post, according to the company's general director Arman Yakhin.

One of the biggest challenges of the project was a large number of digital characters (over 50), both completely virtual and recreated using motion capture of actors. For this work, the walls of the Mosfilm pavilions were covered with blue chroma key, on which the backgrounds were painted. In the first case, the actor on the court interacts with the dimensional toy, in the second - with the actor in a blue suit with inertial sensors. Through the use of augmented reality technology, the director could see on his monitor a full-fledged image immediately, that is, instead of a blue person - an alien.

Additional work on creating a unique world of the picture, was done by visual effects specialists from the studio Main Road Post.[21]

The first teaser for the film was shown on September 30, 2017, during the IgroMir / Comic-Con Russia festival, when the director presented the film to the audience.[29][30]

The film became the first major national blockbuster in Russia to be released after the effects of the outbreak of the coronavirus in Russia that forced a restriction on the number of viewers in cinemas,[31] and put in the amount of 106.6 million Russian rubles (about $1.4 million) compared to a budget of 786,4 million rubles.

The film was released on digital rental in Russia on October 9, 2020, at the KinoPoisk HD online cinema.

The film received mostly low to average ratings from Russian critics, who noted the weak storyline and expressionless dialogues of the characters.[32]

Nikolai Kornatsky from "Film Art" wrote that with the visual part, everything is also not cosmic. The graphics themselves - unprecedented for our cinema - are in no way inferior to either Valerian (2017) or Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). But this whole huge, loud and populous world all too often evokes a sense of déjà vu.[33]

Anton Dolin noted that the film lacks a clearly invented world, the laws, and background of which the authors begin to explain to the audience from the first seconds, but they continue to struggle until the very end. An interesting plot, since three stories - about Dr. Frankenstein and the monster he spawned, about a naive boy who will eventually grow into a messiah, and about a sports competition - do not fit well with each other.[34]