Vancouver - Mainframe Entertainment is gearing up for its first theatrical animated feature, Escape from Planet Earth. The Vancouver toonco, which has animated several direct-to-video features (Inspector Gadget's Biggest Caper Ever, Casper's Haunted Christmas), is one of the producers and will animate the film.

The concept - a group of aliens tries to escape from the mysterious Area 51 - came from Tony Leech and Cory Edwards, the team behind the recent CG-animated Hoodwinked. According to Rick Mischel, Mainframe's CEO, the duo developed a relationship with Greg Little, Mainframe's VP of development, who runs the company's office in L.A. This led to the shop doing design work to help Leech and Edwards with the pitch for Escape. Mainframe remained attached.

"I think they responded to Mainframe's capabilities," says Mischel, an executive producer on the film. "They wanted to make their next film in North America, and liked the fact that we had all this experience in the direct-to-video world."

Leech will direct, with Mainframe's Little and Brian Inerfeld, along with Preston Stutzman (Hoodwinked) of Blue Yonder Films and Jonathan Shestack (Air Force One) producing. Production, says Mischel, will likely begin in the summer and take two years to complete. At its peak, the film will use about 130 Mainframe staffers.

The Weinstein Company has fast-tracked the project and will distribute.

"They want to get this thing into production because they're interested in competing in the CG theatrical world," says Mischel. "They like Mainframe because they know we can create a quality level comparable to other CG movies, but at a much lesser cost than the Pixars of the world."