What's in the Box, who remembers that video? Natural sciences student Tim Smit, from Nijmegen, made it in 2009 and it went viral. Since then, he has been working on the thing that he really wanted to make: a feature film. The premiere is in June, with actors Dan Stevens and Tygo Gernandt.

Location: the parking lot behind the Albert Heijn at the Daalseweg. We see abandoned cars, an exploding house and a man who is hiding in a city bus. The atmosphere is dark. The 2009 science fiction video by natural sciences student Tim Smit lasts a mere ten minutes. Unexpectedly, it went viral and before he knew it, he was interviewed by daily talkshow De Wereld Draait Door (Dutch). Producers in Hollywood called him, because clearly, they were dealing with someone with talent.

What was special about What’s in the Box? The visuals. Smit had constructed something that you would not even expect from a professional visual effects artist, let alone a student who makes a video for fun.

By accident
‘I wanted to attend a workshop at Go Short film festival’, he says now, eight years later. ‘About how you can turn a short video into a feature film. They asked me if I could send them something I made. That’s why I uploaded What’s in the Box on YouTube. It was discovered accidentally.’ Smit’s video was viewed over 2,5 million times. The attention was an unintended push in the direction he wanted to take: become a film maker.

‘That’s when the meetings started’, he says. ‘It took a long time before I decided who I wanted to work with and before we finished the script. We started filming in 2014.’

Amsterdam
Unfortunately, the film is not set in Nijmegen. Smit would have wanted that, but it was too expensive – film company FilmNation in L.A. finances the film – to move the whole cast to the Waal city to shoot it. Amsterdam it was. The film is a Dutch science fiction, English-spoken. The main role is played by star actor Dan Stevens, the beast in Disney’s new Beauty and the Beast. Dutch actor Tygo Gernandt (Brimstone, Michiel de Ruyter) plays one of the other roles.

Smit himself was director and he was also behind the visual effects. ‘Every shot is edited’, he says. He did that at home, in his studio at the St. Annastraat. It was a bit more work than he had expected, but he did it. Today, a teaser of the film will be published. In June, the post-apocalyptic film Kill Switch will be screened in Dutch cinema’s. ‘Yes, you will find out what’s in the box in the end’, Smit reveals. ‘The question is if you like it.’

Here, you can see the teaser. Kill Switch is published by FilmNation (Hollywood). The producer is CTM Entertainment in Hilversum.