Prospect (film)

A teenage girl, Cee, and her father, Damon, descend from a transport spaceship to a forest moon's surface in a landing pod to mine for gems. During their descent, a technical malfunction cripples the lander, forcing them to land some distance away from their planned prospecting site. On foot, they find an abandoned dig site where they extract a fleshy pod from the earth, revealing a valuable gem inside. Cee urges her father to return to the lander with the gem, but Damon insists on continuing to the original site.

Setting out again, Damon encounters two rival prospectors, Ezra and his silent partner. Initially planning to rob Damon at gunpoint, they reconsider when Damon counter-offers to join forces. He reveals he's been asked to assist mercenaries who've discovered the legendary 'queen's lair,' an incredibly valuable dig site. Damon proposes that instead of aiding the mercenaries, he, Ezra, and the silent companion can collaborate to claim the site for themselves.

Ezra agrees to the alliance, but Cee, who has been hidden, ambushes them with a rifle. This allows Damon to disarm Ezra and take both rival prospectors hostage. When Damon tries to rob Ezra, the silent partner attacks, leading to a shootout. Ezra's partner is killed, and Damon, mortally wounded, is executed by Ezra.

Cee retreats to her malfunctioning lander, which won't start, and is found by Ezra hours later. When Ezra tries to enter, Cee shoots him in the arm and takes him captive. Ezra proposes following Damon's initial plan to assist the mercenaries for a ride on their ship. Cee agrees reluctantly, and they head for the queen's lair. Ezra's arm becomes infected from the moon's poisonous spores, prompting them to seek medical help from local villagers. The villagers propose trading gems for Cee instead. As Ezra inquires about the deal, Cee escapes, pursued by the villagers.

After wandering alone, Cee encounters Ezra again, his wound severely worsened. She helps him amputate his arm and they proceed to a mercenary camp near the queen's lair. After securing a ride on the mercenaries' ship, they try and fail multiple times to extract gems. When their guard moves to report their failure, Ezra kills him, triggering a fight with the remaining mercenaries. Several are killed, and Ezra sustains grave injuries. Cee tends to his wounds, and they escape into orbit aboard the mercenaries' ship.

Zeek Earl and Chris Caldwell met at the Seattle Pacific University.[3] They formed the production company Shep Films and initially made commercials before making short films.[4] They first produced Prospect as a short film, with a $21,000 budget which they raised through Kickstarter. The short drew attention after premiering at the 2014 SXSW Film Festival, ultimately becoming a hit on Vimeo. [5]

After that they wanted to make Prospect into a feature length film. The duo presented the pitch to studios and secured a $4,000,000 financing from the Canadian BRON Studios.

They wanted seven months to make the film's ships, costumes, and weapons. For that they moved into a former ship-building warehouse in Fremont, Seattle “We hired a lot of people who'd never worked on a movie before: industrial designers, carpenters, mechanics, cosplayers," said Caldwell. "They were working with us as the script was being written, and by the time we got the green light, we had this kind of art collective under one roof."[6] The production team used a Computer Numeric Control kit to create much of the ship's interiors.

All of Prospect's exterior shots were filmed on a private land trust adjacent to the Olympic National Park, Washington.[7]

Prospect premiered on March 5, 2018 at the 2018 South by Southwest Film Festival, where it won the Adam Yauch Hörnblowér Award. The company Gunpowder and Sky, under their label Dust, released the film in Regal Cinemas theaters on November 2, 2018. The film was released on video-on-demand and home media on March 8, 2019.[8]

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes assessed 54 reviews; it reported 43 as positive and 6 as negative, for an overall rating of 89%. The website's critical consensus reads, "Fueled by character development and setting instead of special effects, Prospect is a sci-fi story whose style is defined—and enriched—by its limitations."[9] The similar website Metacritic assessed 8 reviews and reported 6 as positive and 2 as mixed. With an overall score of 68 out of 100, it said the film had "generally favorable reviews".[10]

Peter Debruge of Variety wrote, "Constructing character does not appear to be Earl and Caldwell’s strong suit (what’s satisfying about Cee owes almost entirely to Thatcher, a fresh face who tricks us into assuming she’s just a callow teen, when in fact, she proves to be the film’s toughest character). On the other hand, the duo show a real aptitude for world building."[11]

• Prospect at IMDb