We featured the short film Blinky a while back, but if you go to the page now, the video is private. Why? Because director Ruairi Robinson is blowing up in a major way, and they’ll probably want to sell the cow instead of giving away the sweet sci-fi milk for free on the internet from now on. If you saw the short before it was walled up, then you know his success is a great, great thing.

He’s got immense talent (and an Academy Award nomination from his 2001 short Fifty Percent Grey), so it was a no-brainer when he got picked up for Lionsgate’s aliens-crashing-in-Russia flick The Fallen, but that probably won’t be his feature debut.

According to Deadline Tharsis Bulge, Qwerty Films is ready to start production in early 2012 for The Last Days on Mars, a story about a routine hunt for life on Mars that runs off the rails when an astronaut biffs it into a cave, dies, and gets taken over bodily by a resident of the red planet. The fresh talent behind the camera will be joined by the seasoned talent of WETA doing effects in front of it.

It sounds a little like The Thing on Mars, which is not bad at all. Plus, Robinson has already proven that he’s more than capable – it will simply be a matter of seeing if his debut is as stunning as his short work. If it is, and considering the projects he has lined up, we may have a new force in sci-fi rising up the ranks.