One week from today, Duncan Jones will fire up production on Mute, the longtime passion project that has been collecting dust on the shelf ever since the filmmaker made tracks for the Moon with Sam Rockwell all those years ago.
Now, one mind-bending sci-fi and a blockbuster tentpole later (read: Source Code and Warcraft: The Beginning), and Jones has finally carved out time to craft his Berlin-set science fiction film, one which sends Alexander Skarsgård and Paul Rudd off to the year 2056.
Per Twitter:
.@MUTE_Film starts shooting in…. one week from today! :0 pic.twitter.com/hbgQVkPyMR
— Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) September 21, 2016
Going off the film’s Twitter account, Mute takes place in a “roiling city of immigrants, where East crashes against West in a sci-fi Casablanca.” That’s quite the premise, one that looks set to tap into the city’s troubled history of socio-economic and political disparity that came to a head shortly before the Berlin Wall was torn down circa 1989. Could Jones’ feature potentially take place on some alternate timeline where that divide – both physical and cultural – persists?
Whatever the case, we know that the writer-director first hatched Mute long before Moon wowed audiences back in 2009. It’ll, ahem, mine inspiration from some genre greats, too, including Paul Schrader’s Hardcore and, of course, Blade Runner, as evidenced by early concept art of airborne cars, neon lights and a crowded metropolis. Color us very, very intrigued.
Mute, the second film in a loosely connected trilogy after Moon, will finally – finally – begin principal photography one week from today, September 21.