With Duncan Jones still hard-at-work on his third and biggest film to date, next summer’s Warcraft, it’ll be five whole years since Source Code hit the big screen. Hoping to relinquish the wait — and probably get himself a little inspired again after all the tedious work involved in this newest film — Jones plans to use the 11-months it’ll take to finish up VFX on his Universal/Legendary picture to shoot another film entirely, his long-gestating passion project Mute.
Kicking around since at least 2009, when concept art began to float onto the web, the Moon director revealed his bold plans at Comic-Con earlier today. Holding near and dear to the sci-fi genre, Mute is a Blade Runner-inspired tale revolving around a mute bartender in a futuristic Berlin who is lifted when he goes searching for his missing girlfriend. The villains are a “pair of comedians,” and little else is known besides this. Chances are the details may have been reworked, since this is an older synopsis of the film. It comes from a screenplay by Jones and Mike Johnson.
This is a movie Jones has had more than a few troubles making in the past, and he described a handful of them in an interview with Brad back in 2011:
Mute is a dark, dirty thriller that just happens to take place in the future and one of the biggest problems we’ve been having with it — well there’s been two — a lot of people don’t understand that you can make a science fiction film that doesn’t rely on some big science fiction idea. The other problem is we need a leading actor that’s going to be able to get us the money to make the film, but our lead in Mute doesn’t talk, he’s mute, he doesn’t say a word and that asks for a huge act of bravery from any star who’s big enough to get us the money. We’re asking a lot of them to say “and you’re not going to talk.” That’s been the trouble.
At the time, he also said it was “different from what everyone else was doing right now,” and that he was “very confident” it was going to get made. Even though it’s taken a number of years, hopefully that’s still the case. Jones is as enthusiastic as ever about the film, and even in the half-decade since he’s said these quotes it doesn’t seem like his opinions on the matter have wavered.
“Mute” will also be release as a graphic novel Dark Horse and Glenn Farby created with the filmmaker for the past couple years. The goal, besides getting the movie’s production in the can before Warcraft‘s release, is to also have the movie ready and in theaters before readers even see what they created for the page.
As this is an indie, there are no studio commitments or release dates planned at the moment. If anything, this is all a bit hypothetical and may not even get to happen in the timeframe Jones would like it to happen. That’s not saying it’s impossible. It’s just a little tricky. If the young director can pull it off, and make at least one good movie in the process, then kudos. The guy already has two good movies in his resume so far. Hopefully he can put together two more by 2016-2017. He also apparently wants to make two Warcraft sequels, so expect him to stay busy.
Warcraft enters theaters on June 10, 2016. [Empire]
