Filmmaker Duncan Jones burst onto the scene in a big way in 2009 with his sci-fi film “Moon,” and ever since, Jones— who has made “Source Code,” and the upcoming “Warcraft” in the interim— has been talking up a “Blade Runner”-ish sci-fi film called “Mute.” In fact, the film has been in the works for over a decade — Jones recently called the project his “Don Quixote,” a reference to Terry Gilliam’s long-unmade/maybe-never-getting-made “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” — but that’s finally changing.
AFM is in full swing and that means sales, scripts being bought, and actors attaching themselves to projects to entice buyers in global markets. Jones has now landed two actors for “Mute,” Marvel’s “Ant-Man” star Paul Rudd and Alexander Skarsgard. Lotus Entertainment is behind the project which is set in a tumultuous Berlin, forty years from now, where a mute bartender encounters an odd pair of American surgeons in his search for his missing love.
Jones and Mike Johnson wrote the screenplay ages ago, and it used to be pretty readily found on the internet (we sure read it back in the day), Skarsgard will play the main mute protagonist and Rudd will take on the role of one of the American surgeons. Here’s the synopsis:
Berlin. Forty years from today. A roiling city of immigrants, where East crashes against West in a science-fiction Casablanca. Leo Beiler (Skarsgard), a mute bartender has one reason and one reason only for living here, and she’s disappeared. But when Leo’s search takes him deeper into the city’s underbelly, an odd pair of American surgeons (led by Rudd) seem to be the only recurring clue, and Leo can’t tell if they can help, or who he should fear most.
“I’ve been working towards making Mute for 12 years now,” Jones said in a statement. “I cannot tell you how thrilled I am that we’re finally going to shoot this utterly unique film. The fact that I get to make it with Alexander Skarsgard and Paul Rudd makes it all the more exciting. Mute is a film that will last. It is unlike any other science fiction being made today.”
Bold words, but hey, it’s nice to see the project finally going forward after all this time. Jones has long maintained that Sam Rockwell’s Sam Bell character from "Moon" would cameo in the film and the filmmaker seems to have confirmed that promise in a tweet you can read below (it also reveals the movie’s composer, Clint Mansell). Next up for Jones is “Warcraft,” the expensive Legendary sci-fi fantasy mash-up movie that’s due on June 10, 2016. You can watch a brief teaser for it here.
@empiremagazine (also have Sam Rockwell and the mighty @iamclintmansell too! Woohoo!)
— Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) November 4, 2015