The $300 film Panic Attack is making its maker a star

A $300 short film has earned its maker a $30 million Hollywood contract. A filmmaker from Uruguay called Fede Alvarez made the four-minute film Atacque de Panico!, which means Panic Attack! in Spanish, and put it on YouTube in early November. When Hollywood director Sam Raimi saw it, he liked it so much that he offered Fede a $30 million contract to make a full-length science fiction film.

Sam is best known for directing the Spider-Man and Evil Dead films. Fede says he can’t believe his luck. He told the radio station BBC Mundo, "I put the film online on a Thursday and on Monday my inbox was totally full of e-mails from Hollywood studios. If some director from some country can do this by just putting a video on YouTube, it means that anyone can do it."

People have watched Fede's film about giant robots destroying the capital city of Uruguay, Montevideo, more than 1.8 million times. Here it is: