Coming Soon: Flatland the Movie

We've blogged about Flatland before, that two-dimensional realm of geometric Victorian mores and social stratums where googolgons &mdashl godlike — rule, triangles are enslaved and women have only one side (removing half the allure) and must sway their hips lest they bisect and murder their male polygonal betters. It's an awesome universe, well beloved by mathematicians and literature buffs alike. And now it's coming to the movies!

Flatland: The Movie is an animated film inspired by Edwin A. Abbott's classic novel, Flatland.

Set in a world of only two dimensions inhabited by sentient geometrical shapes, the story follows Arthur Square and his ever-curious granddaughter Hex. When a mysterious visitor arrives from Spaceland, Arthur and Hex must come to terms with the truth of the third dimension, risking dire consequences from the evil Circles that have ruled Flatland for a thousand years.

The trailer's pretty awesome, although it looks like they completely abandoned the fun social commentary from the novel, eliminating Flatland's side-based class structure and substituting some nonsense about "the more sides you have, the smarter you are, because you can figure out all the angles." Which is pretty clever in and of itself, but has much less charm than the Victorian era wrought upon a piece of graph paper.

Flatland [Official Movie Site]