Duncan Jones' MUTE in Limbo, His Next Will Be A BLADE RUNNER Homage?

By Neil Upton /

Advertisement
Duncan Jones' first movie Moon marked the emergence of a great new genre talent, winning the Bafta for Outstanding Debut of 2009. Working with a miniscule budget with no big bangs or space battles, the Brit rookie created a moody, thoughtful throwback to 70s science fiction masterpieces like Silent Running and Solaris. How Sam Rockwell didn't receive more accolades for his one-man show performance in the film amazes me to this day. Now that he's finished worked on his sophomore science fiction tale Source Code, starring Jake Gyllenhall, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright, a big studio sci-fi thriller which makes it's debut opening SXSW festival this coming April, Jones is starting to think about his next project. It was expected for a while that his next would be his low key, future set thriller Mute, about a non-speaking bartender in search of his kidnapped girlfriend in Berlin but it seems his plans have changed;
Well it€™s in a bit of a limbo actually. I€™ve always loved the script and felt it was a film worth making, but it€™s a tricky one. It€™s a sci-fi film, and one of the drafts of the scripts got leaked a while back. The reaction was mixed. Most people didn€™t get the fact that yes it is sci-fi but it€™s a futurist film. It€™s a thriller that happens to take place in the future, it€™s not some amazing piece of technology that ya know the world is depending upon and the whole story revolves around some particular piece of technology or some sci-fi hook. That was the whole idea, to tell a film that can be based in any period, but just HAPPENS to take place in the future. And it€™s been very difficult to basically pitch that in a way where people understand why it needs to be done that way. People just say, why can€™t it be in a contemporary setting? But no, it€™s about mood and atmosphere as much as anything else. It€™s also quite dark so it€™s been a tough sell. Also, it€™s not a big film, it has been designed to be sort of a smaller and more independent film. Budget wise, it€™s in between €˜Moon€™ and €˜Source Code.€™ I just need to get away from it for a while. I€™ll come back to it one day and hopefully it€™ll work the way I see it working. In the meantime, I have another project that I€™m very excited about. It will address what people expect from sci-fi films but still does what I want it to do, and still has the heart and energy that I€™d wanna see in a sci-fi film.
Huge shame but he's already on set in mind what he plans to make next;
"One thing I can tell you about my next project is that I€™m determined to do a future city film, I want it to be my homage to Blade Runner, even if it€™s a bit bigger (than Mute), it will be a city based future film."
Wow... we desperately need to hear more details. Some one pin Jones down and beat it out of him!