Editor’s note: This piece was originally published September 29, 2016.
Oh, wait, I typed “Mute“, not “nude.”
I’m sure you don’t mind.
Friend and streaming neighbor Netflix (likely with a simultaneous limited-theater run) has nabbed Duncan Jones’ next: a science fiction outing years in the making, starring Alexander Skarsgård as an “ex-Amish” man who still keeps to the tenets:
It’s about a guy who was in an accident as a kid. He’s ex-Amish, so he lives a very monastic life: he doesn’t have a cellphone or anything like that. He’s left the community but he still kinda follows the rules.
Forty-some years from the present day in Berlin, Skarsgård’s character, Leo Beiler, “has only one reason for living:” his girlfriend Naadirah (Seyneb Saleh), who’s gone missing. With the modern backdrop and a city run by gangsters, Beiler keeps bumping into a couple of American surgeons (uh-oh), at least one of whom you might recognize:
Holy … that’s a lot of pretty acting prowess in one movie. But, wait, there’s more. Skarsgård met with Jones and likened the Mute aesthetic to that of Blade Runner:
Concept art via Empire
In Empire Magazine‘s podcast, he also leaked the juicy tidbit that Mute has a Moon connection … and, in fact, Sam Rockwell’s Sam Bell is listed in the credits. Paul Rudd (as a guy called “Cactus Bill”), The Leftovers’ and The Girl on the Train‘s Justin Theroux, and Gilbert Owuor (True Blood, The Newsroom) are also aboard.
All I’m hoping is that this isn’t an Almodóvarian situation, if (no spoilers) you catch my drift.
Filming began this week; Mute‘s release date is TBA.
*Updated January 27, 2018
Netflix released a trailer for the trailer which will be released in full on January 30th, and since any Skarsgård is good Skarsgård, we’re all in. Jones’ film premieres simultaneously in theaters and on Netflix, February 23rd.
1.30. pic.twitter.com/joIbXlXcCA
— MUTE (@mute) January 27, 2018
Updated January 30, 2017
Here’s the full trailer (the second Paul Rudd film preview today), and it looks positively insane.
