With a substantial wait for Warcraft: The Beginning to unleash its Orcish cargo on cinemas, Duncan Jones’ thoughts have long-since turned to Mute. In the new issue of Empire, he shares some eye-popping new concept art and talks in detail about his long-standing passion project.
“It’s a thriller with a very weird tone,” he tells us. "It goes very dark, then it also goes very darkly funny. It’s science-fiction urban, so it certainly owes some of its influence to Blade Runner.”
Mute, originally conceived as Jones’s first feature before being superseded by Moon, follows Leo, a mute man searching for a missing person in mid-21st century Berlin.
Intriguingly, Jones describes the setting as “the Casablanca of the future”. To his first concept art (below), released in 2009 and showing a neon candyland of bars and sleek fleshpots, he’s added a dank, Blade Runner-like nightscape dotted with future tech and shadowy figures.
"Paul Schrader’s Hardcore meets Robert Altman’s MASH” is how he’s defining the film. After Warcraft and Source Code it’s a return to smaller, indie filmmaking that’ll take him and his cast, Paul Rudd and Alexander Skarsgård included, to Berlin to shoot. Pick up the new issue of Empire – onsale on April 28 – for much more on Mute and Warcraft: The Beginning, as well as plenty of other exclusives and all-round movie magic. You can subscribe instantly via this handy link{