In a recent interview, director Duncan Jones told us that despite what we thought, Mute will not be his next film after Source Code. According to Duncan, Mute is in a sort of limbo state and he’s having trouble getting it made. So instead, he’s going to make a future city film. The film was written by Duncan himself and while speaking about it he said, “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, it will be a city based future film.”
When talking about Mute, he told us that:
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.
Sounds very interesting. Nothing else is known about this project and it seems very secretive, but Duncan Jones directing a future city film seems like a winner to me. We’ll keep you updated when we find out more news on this.