IndieWire

April 8, 2011

 

News on the Wachowskis’ gestating adaptation of “Cloud Atlas” have been coming in fits and starts. Halle Berry, Tom Hanks and Natalie Portman were all attached last summer, but that was a while ago and priorities tend of shift. Add to that, as of January, Portman revealed that it still needed financing. But all that said, it looks like the Wachowskis are still putting their cast together and have potentially enlisted the assistance of a long-time collaborator.

According to a tweet from the book company Hachette Australia (via Filmonic), “Actor Hugo Weaving has said he is working on the film adaption of David Mitchell‘s Cloud Atlas with the makers of The Matrix!”

And that’s about it. No word yet on who the star of “The Matrix” trilogy and “V For Vendetta” will play or even where the production currently stands. Needless to say, it will certainly be interesting to see how the Wachowskis adapt David Mitchell‘s source material, but there’s no doubt it’s suited to their sensibilities. The 500-plus page book spans centuries and follows six major characters described thusly by Amazon: “There is a naïve clerk on a nineteenth-century Polynesian voyage; an aspiring composer who insinuates himself into the home of a syphilitic genius; a journalist investigating a nuclear plant; a publisher with a dangerous best-seller on his hands; and a cloned human being created for slave labor. These five stories are bisected and arranged around a sixth, the oral history of a post-apocalyptic island, which forms the heart of the novel.”

The Wachowskis are planning to team on the directing gig with Tom Tykwer, but whether or not the long-in-development movie is close to filming remains to be seen. The sibling duo also have their ambitious Iraq war gay romance flick “Cobalt Neutral 9” in the works too, though word on that project has quieted since last year. Weaving will next be seen as the villainous Red Skull in “Captain America: The First Avenger” which opens on July 22nd.