Earlier this year, we reported (via Production Weekly) Tom Hanks, James McAvoy, Natalie Portman, Halle Berry and Ian McKellen were offered roles in “Run Lola Run” director Tom Tykwer’s adaptation of “Cloud Atlas” (in conjunction with the Wachowski siblings acting as producers). Those working on the film evidently noticed our handiwork.
While Tykwer puts the finishing touches on “Drei” (“Three”) his forthcoming feature which will premiere at the Venice Film Festival, a source close to the project tells us the director was in L.A. recently meeting with all the potential cast members and now all of them are officially attached to the project, save Ian McKellen who still remains a question mark.
While these attachments may be loose as the picture has no financing or studio backing, this could potentially change through Portman. She starred in Tykwer’s “Paris J’Taime” short “Faubourg Saint-Denis/True” and has been circling this project with the Wachowskis since early 2009 and obviously she’s moving into producing or at least executive producing projects like David O. Russell’s “Pride and Prejudice And Zombies” and the “Untitled Ivan Reitman Project” formerly known as “Fuckbuddies” and “Friends With Benefits.”
The project is still probably a ways off. McAVoy has “X-Men: First Class” and Hanks has his own directorial project “Larry Crowne” to contend with, but if the money comes together and the timing works it’s conceivable that the film could shoot sometime in 2011 (the original report has a Spring 2011 shoot in mind, so this could still ostensibly work).
“Cloud Atlas” is epic, features six main characters, and spans thousands of years and several genres, and would seem unfilmable to most, but obviously the German-helmer is game. It sounds like the project — like many Hollywood films — is slowly moving forward.
Tykwer’s films aside from the international hit “Run Lola Run” include “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” (which introduced many audiences to Ben Whishaw), the forgettable “The International” (a backfired attempt to go Hollywood), “The Princess and the Warrior,” and “Heaven,” an unfilmed script by the great Polish auteur Krystof Kieslowski starring Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi. While the film couldn’t possibly compare to Kieslowski’s profound and enigmatic works, the last key sequence of the film was heavenly and something the departed filmmaker would have surely been proud of.