Duncan Jones, director of Moon, Source Code and, more recently, Legendary’s Warcraft adaptation is clearly not big on holidays. With work on his sprawling video game adaptation coming to a close – aside from a handful of VFX shots, the project is ostensibly wrapped up – Jones plans to revisit a long-gestating film that has alluded the spotlight for some time.
That property in question is Mute, a low-fi sci-fi that reportedly draws stylistic inspiration from Ridley Scott’s seminal Blade Runner. According to Empire, Jones is aiming to finally drag the noir in front of the cameras during his Warcraft downtime, citing the 11 months it took to film the rather excellent Moon as inspiration for a quick turnaround.
Dark Horse and Glenn Fabry and myself have been working on the graphic novel for [Mute] for years now – literally years – and there’s a very good chance, if I can squeeze [it in] in these 11 months, that you’ll see the film before you see the graphic novel. It’s 11 months to sneak in my little indie sci-fi before Warcraft comes out. I got Moon done in 11 months.
In collaboration with his co-writer Mike Johnson, Mute is the story of a dumb bartender who is kidnapped while out on the hunt for his missing girlfriend. The early concept had his captors as a pair of comedians, though how much the film has changed – if at all – in that time that has lapsed between its inception and now is unclear.
Aside from a single piece of concept art, there’s really not an awful lot to go on when it comes to Mute. The grimy sci-fi locales are certainly interesting, and in our eyes, the director has earned the benefit of the doubt following his existential, provocative Moon in 2009.
