Fans of the cosmic video game Rogue Trooper might be really excited to know that Duncan Jones is working on an animated feature adaptation. The filmmaker is known for coming out with some of the best sci-fi movies in recent memory with 2009’s Moon and Source Code from 2011, and he is clearly a video game fan, having helmed 2016’s Warcraft, so he seems like the perfect choice for the job. To find out what else there is to know about this upcoming sci-fi movie, continue reading our following guide to Rogue Trooper.

What Is The Rogue Trooper Release Date?

At the moment, no release date for Rogue Trooper has been announced. Hopefully, we will be able to call it an upcoming 2025 movie, but only time will tell.

The Rogue Trooper Voice Cast

Despite the relative obscurity of its source material, the Rogue Trooper voice cast boasts an impressive ensemble of A-list talent. Take a look at the actors lending their voices to the out-of-this-world adventure, all of whom have currently undisclosed roles except for the one portraying the title hero.

Aneurin Barnard (Rogue Trooper)

Duncan Jones’ Rogue Trooper is being voiced by Aneurin Barnard, who has previously faced combat as a member of Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk cast in 2017, as well as otherworldly phenomena as part of Netflix’s 1899 cast and in a couple of episodes of Doctor Who. 

The Welsh actor is also known for several period pieces, such as the 2015 crime biopic Legend with fellow Dunkirk star Tom Hardy, and literary adaptations like 2019’s The Goldfinch and The Personal History of David Copperfield from the following year. 

Hayley Atwell

Also lending her voice to the Rogue Trooper voice cast is Hayley Atwell, who is no stranger to dealing with otherworldly phenomena, having played Peggy Carter in the Marvel movies, starred in AMC’s remake of the classic sci-fi TV series, The Prisoner, and led one of the best Black Mirror episodes, “Be Right Back.” The English actor also, more recently, joined the Mission: Impossible movies as Grace in Dead Reckoning.

Jack Lowden

Barnard’s Dunkirk and War & Peace co-star Jack Lowden can also say he has starred opposite Tom Hardy in a crime biopic, namely Capone, and an adaptation of David Copperfield for Audible. The Scottish actor has also played a spy in the Apple TV+ original TV show, Slow Horses, for which he received a nomination at the 76th Emmys. 

Sean Bean

We cannot help but feel that Sean Bean’s Rogue Trooper character might be doomed to suffer a bitter fate, given how many of his most famous roles — such as Boromir in the Lord of the Rings movies and Ned Stark from the Game of Thrones cast — do not survive for very long. Then again, he lived through his last few space movies, Jupiter Ascending and The Martian, and he also made it to the Possessor ending, despite being the main assassin’s target in Brandon Cronenberg’s 2020 thriller.

Daryl McCormack

Irish actor Daryl McCormack is yet another cast member who has a credit in common with Barnard, namely Netflix’s Peaky Blinders, on which he recurred as Isaiah Jesus. He is better known for playing the title role of one of the best movies on Hulu, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, and more recently appeared in Twisters (which experienced a real tornado on set) in a brief, but memorable part.

Reece Shearsmith

Two-time BAFTA winner Reece Shearsmith has also been on Doctor Who, but has encountered extra-terrestrials on many other occasions — such as on Apple TV+’s Foundation, on Netflix’s 3 Body Problem, and in 2005’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy alongside his fellow members of surreal British comedy troupe, The League of Gentlemen. Some audiences may also recognize him for his brief appearance in horror comedy classic Shaun of the Dead and as Professor Ware in Saltburn.

Jemaine Clement

Best known as one-half of New Zealand-based folk parody duo, Flight of the Conchords, Jemaine Clement has shared the screen with aliens (in Avatar: The Way of Water) and also played one of the Men in Black movies’ scariest aliens, Boris the Animal. He is also known for his many collaborations with Taika Waititi, such as the hilarious, mockumentary-style vampire movie, What We Do in the Shadows.

Matt Berry

Speaking of What We Do in the Shadows, one of the stars of FX’s hilarious spin-off (and one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu), Matt Berry, is also part of the Rogue Trooper cast. The IT Crowd actor has previously lent his instantly recognizable voice to sci-fi titles like Disney+’s Star Wars Universe TV show The Book of Boba Fett and Amazon Prime’s Fallout, and also has a role in The Wild Robot — an animated sci-fi film coming out in September 2024.

Diane Morgan

British comedian Diane Morgan is probably best known as Philomena Cunk — a TV reporter she has played in various titles, such as Netflix’s Cunk on Earth. She also voiced Gryphon in Netflix’s The Sandman cast and plays another British TV character named Mandy on her self-titled sitcom.

Alice Lowe

One of Alice’s Lowe’s earliest acting gigs was alongside Matt Berry on the sci-fi horror parody, Garth Merenghi’s Darkplace, before she went on to work with the likes of Edgar Wright on Hot Fuzz and The World’s End, and Ben Wheatley on films like Sightseers and Kill List, to name a few. She was also in Netflix’s interactive movie, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, and the platform’s short-lived sci-fi TV show, Lockwood & Co. 

Asa Butterfield

One of Asa Butterfield’s earliest leading roles (following 2008’s The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and 2011’s Hugo), saw him go to space in the titular role of 2013’s Ender’s Game and later saw him visit Earth for the first time in 2016’s The Space Between Us. The English actor has also starred in many recent horror titles, like Netflix’s Choose or Die, but one of his most popular gigs with the platform is leading the Sex Education cast as Otis.

What Rogue Trooper Is About 

We established early on that Rogue Trooper is a video game series from Rebellion Developments that was first released in 2006 but the game is an adaptation of a 1981 comic strip that originated from 2000 AD — the U.K.-based sci-fi publication behind Judge Dredd. Created by writer Gerry Finley-Day with illustrator Dave Gibbons (best known for illustrating Watchmen, which was recently adapted into an animated movie), the Rogue Trooper character is a blue-skinned infantryman who has been genetically engineered to survive the uninhabitable landscape of his war-torn planet, Nu-Earth. 

Accompanied by the digital consciousnesses of his three dead comrades who have downloaded into his rifle, helmet, and backpack, the super soldier embarks on a personal mission of revenge while caught up in a brutal, ongoing conflict. No specific plot details for the Rogue Trooper movie have been revealed yet but we imagine a fan like Duncan Jones will be devoted to staying true to the source material. 

Written And Directed By Duncan Jones

Duncan Jones is serving as both the writer and director of Rogue Trooper, which the filmmaker revealed on X is "making him sweat" with the effort it has taken. The son of late rock star David Bowie made his feature film debut with the aforementioned Moon (one of the best movies of the 2000s), which he followed with Source Code, Warcraft, and a Netflix movie called Mute from 2018.

Jones is also producing the film alongside Stuart Fenegan and Jason and Chris Kingsley. This will actually mark the second attempt at making Rogue Trooper, following when, according to Daily Record, acclaimed comic book writer Grant Morrison was set to pen the adaptation that never came to fruition after the disappointing box office returns of what is now considered one of the best non-Marvel or DC comic book movies, Dredd.

Rogue Trooper Is Animated With The Unreal 5 Engine Tool

While a live-action Rogue Trooper movie sounds like a pretty remarkable idea, as we established at the top, this feature will be animated. The film is being developed with the use of the Unreal 5 Engine, which is a virtual reality tool that is used by many game developers and animators to create realistic 3D simulations. So, that being said, anyone disappointed that they won’t be seeing a live-action adaptation might be thinking twice when the film comes out.

Hopefully, Duncan Jones and co. do not go rogue before Rogue Trooper gets finished!

Warning: The following story contains spoilers for Mute, so stop reading this now, go stream it on Netflix, then come back.

Part of the fun of diving into Duncan Jones' original sci-fi thriller Mute was seeing how the director of Warcraft and Source Code would tie this new film into Moon, his pioneering space-set pulse-racer that starred Sam Rockwell as a stranded astronaut aboard a moon base. If you watched Mute, you caught Rockwell's astronaut, Sam Bell, and his numerous clones on a TV screen in a scene with Alexander Skarsgard's mute hero, Leo. Sam Bell is confronting Lunar Industries, the company that stranded him aboard his moon base in the 2009 movie. Now Jones is saying that he has a way to continue Bell's story in a third movie, explaining:

Duncan Jones was speaking about key Mute scenes with Business Insider, and he shared above his plans to possibly conclude Sam Bell's "mission" to return home and confront the company that duped him into manning a lunar base for longer than anticipated. But as Jones notes, the story of astronaut Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) would not be the focus of a third story in this universe. It'd merely play out in the backgrounds of a separate story that happened to run parallel to whatever tale Jones was spinning.

During our recent conversation with Duncan Jones, the Mute filmmaker actually admitted to filming more scenes that referenced Sam Bell for the Netflix release, though they didn't make the final cut. Jones told us:

Mute is set in a futuristic version of Berlin, Germany, and primarily follows a mute bartender (Alexander Skarsgard) as he searches for his missing girlfriend. His quest puts him on the same path as two seedy surgeons, played by Paul Rudd and Justin Theroux. See a bit of Duncan Jones' vision in the Mute trailer:

Mute is available to stream on Netflix as we speak. Critics didn't love it nearly as much as we did, but read our review, then give it a chance.

Unless you lived in China, you were probably more than a little disappointed with the Warcraft movie. Duncan Jones' massive undertaking was technically impressive, but otherwise, the movie left a bit to be desired. Now, the director has spoken out a bit about the process of creating Warcraft. It seems that part of the difficulty in making the movie came from the need to make several different factions happy, turning the movie into what he calls a "political minefield." According to Jones...

As Duncan Jones explains to SyFy Wire, the first group he had to deal with was Legendary Pictures. The studio shifted affiliations from Warner Bros to Universal, then was sold outright to Chinese company Wanda, all during the production of Warcraft. When the sale happened, halfway through production, it meant seeing half the production staff get replaced. When that happens, you can expect a lot of opinions about the movie to change, meaning Jones had been making a movie to make one group of people happy, then likely had a whole new group of producers that didn't agree with whatever the first group had said. Welcome to the world of studio politics.

However, the studio wasn't the only group of people that Duncan Jones needed to please, he also had game developer Blizzard. Warcraft was a massive property for Blizzard, responsible for billions of dollars which meant they understandably took a very active interest in how the movie would portray the brand.

On the one hand, Blizzard wants Warcraft to be represented well in the movie because it reflects on the overall brand, but at the same time, the movie was such a small part of the larger system that the focus was on making sure the game stayed strong, not that the movie was any good.

It's understandable that this entire experience was a complicated tap dance for Duncan Jones. While he says Warcraft was the hardest thing he's ever written, he seemingly considers the film a learning and experience and is glad he went through it once, as it now makes dealing with those sorts of things on other films easier.

While Warcraft 's international success made the movie a money maker, it seems unlikely that the franchise will continue in its current form. Having said that, Warcraft is still a popular game, so it's unlikely that the franchise will be gone from the big screen forever.

Warning: The following story contains spoilers for Mute, so stop reading this now, go stream it on Netflix, then come back.

Duncan Jones (Warcraft, Source Code) has been saying for some time that his latest sci-fi thriller Mute is a spiritual sequel to Moon, the pioneering space-set pulse-racer he delivered back in 2009. And for those of you who watched Mute already, you probably caught Sam Rockwell's astronaut, Sam Bell, and his numerous clones on a TV screen in a scene with Alexander Skarsgard's mute hero, Leo. Sam Bell is confronting Lunar Industries, the company that stranded him aboard his moon base in the 2009 movie. But when we spoke with Jones ahead of Mute's release, he said that he shot plenty more with Rockwell that didn't make it into the final cut of the movie. Jones revealed:

So, it's not like Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) was ever going to confront Cactus Bill (Paul Rudd) in that awesome American diner, or bowl a few rounds with Duck (Justin Theroux). But from the get go, Duncan Jones wanted to make it clear that the story of Mute took place on the same timeline as Moon, and that Sam Bell received some closure because audiences now know that he got home, and managed to confront his diabolical employers.

For this reason, Duncan Jones tells CinemaBlend that he has been planning Sam Bell's part in Mute basically from the minute that Moon wrapped shooting. He explains:

It really is a funny scene that, even though it lasts seconds, probably took longer to film than you realize. It's part of the detail that makes Mute special, and worth a watch. The movie is on Netflix as we speak. Check out our review, then head over to the streaming service and see what has become of Sam Bell.

I have been describing Duncan Jones' Mute as "Blade Runner's kinky cousin." The comparison to Sir Ridley Scott's slick wet future dream might be top of mind because Denis Villenueve so expertly revived the world with his own Blade Runner 2049. But there's no way not to view Mute and not feel as if the neon-drenched landscapes of Jones' futuristic playground doesn't take inspiration from Scott's visionary creation. But then we reach a significant plot turn, and we realize that Jones aims to tell a different type of story here. And that's when Mute gets downright sleazy.

Thanks to a tragic accident that occurred during his childhood, Leo (Alexander Skarsgard) is unable to speak. Now grown, he spends his evenings tending bar at a dangerous Berlin nightclub, the kind of seedy joint where entitled gangsters openly hit on cocktail servers like the blue-haired, pale-skinned Naadirah (Seyneb Saleh). Leo hates this. You see, he and Naadirah date, and outside of the bar, she shows him a human and emotional side that she keeps from the watering-hole patrons. For her own survival.

Leo's self-imposed distance from the criminal underlings at his workplace gets challenged, however, when Naadirah disappears. She warns Leo that she's no good, and that the strong-but-silent barkeep would be better off without her. But he doesn't listen. So, he begins to investigate her mysterious absence, and the clues point him to a mess of underworld shenanigans.

This is where we catch up with the colorful reason why Mute is worth a stream. The "B" plot in Duncan Jones' sci-fi thriller runs concurrent to Leo's quest (they intersect eventually, very late in the movie), and follows the exploits of two drifters, Cactus Bill (Paul Rudd) and Duck (Justin Theroux). The duo mainly earn money performing surgeries for mob bosses. Your underling took on some shrapnel in a gun fight? Bring them to Bill and Duck's hideaway operating table. These two have a rich history, which is hinted at through dialogue as the movie zings along. But Cactus Bill isn't focus on his past. He's concerned for his future. He has a daughter. He needs papers, so he can get out of Berlin. He wants to be back in the States. And he'll sacrifice Duck -- and Leo -- if it means getting him out of Germany and back home.

Duncan Jones has gone on the record to say that Mute took him 16 years to get made, and now that we're able to see it, it's easy to understand why. This is a dirty, kinky film that would have to be compromised if it were to be released in theaters. Basically, Mute needed Netflix, and Netflix -- in an effort to establish itself as a destination for original programming -- needed Mute. Content police don't seem to monitor Netflix with the same regulations as the MPAA, meaning that Mute doesn't have to pull punches when it explores the dark crevices of Cactus Bill and Duck's practices. You might think you know where Mute is going with them, but you'll be glad to be wrong.

That storyline works because Paul Rudd plays so deliciously against type as Cactus Bill. Rudd's a natural charmer, a likable guy who audiences want to befriend, in virtually every circumstance. But rarely has Rudd been required to use that accessibility to lure people in to a truly menacing persona like Cactus, and it says a lot about his performance that even when we know the truth about this man, I still found myself compelled to side with him. Maybe it's just that glorious mustache. I'm under its spell.

I'm also under the spell of the neo-noir, cyberpunk Berlin that Duncan Jones creates with production designer Gavin Bocquet and composer Clint Mansell. As mentioned, it feels like an offshoot of Blade Runner, as if, if at any moment, you tore your eyes away from Harrison Ford's Rick Deckard and peeked down a different alley, you'd spy Cactus Bill or Leo and choose to follow them for a few hours. Jones even connects Mute to his earlier sci-fi drama, Moon, in a clever sequence, laying an even broader foundation.

What Mute lacks in originality, it makes up for in risky storytelling and unpredictably grimy plot decisions. The storylines connect in a satisfying manner, and the production values create a futuristic sandbox that doesn't feel cheapened by a reduced budget. It all reminds me that I'd like to come back to Mute's world and follow more storylines, because you know this fertile ground can unearth up many more engaging narratives.

Duncan Jones' new sci-fi thriller Mute has a number of different storylines in play. One involves the seedy Paul Rudd, his sleazy business partner (played by Justin Theroux), and the deal they struck with a gaggle of gangsters. But the other follows the mute bartender of the title, Leo (Alexander Skarsgard) and his troubled relationship with a beautiful cocktail waitress. It's that storyline that is addressed in the newest Mute trailer, which you can watch below, EXCLUSIVELY on CinemaBlend:

What if I also told you that Mute, which is set in a distant future that feels like an offshoot of Sir Ridley Scott's Blade Runner universe, is a spiritual sequel to Duncan Jones' Moon, with Sam Rockwell? There is a tease, but you will have to wait until February 23 to find out what it is.

For now, I can tell you that Leo (Alexander Skarsgard) is mute because of a childhood accident, but his disability doesn't interfere with his adoration for Naadirah (Seyneb Saleh), the chameleonesque drink slinger at a bar in this futuristic world. When Naadirah disappears, Leo is plunged into a dark and dangerous world, where he crosses paths with nefarious (and colorful) criminal elements.

After a detour into the realm of Warcraft, it's refreshing to see Duncan Jones bring his eye -- and ear -- for original science-fiction back for a story like Mute. The writer/director has said in interviews that this is a story he has been working on for years, looking for the right opportunity to bring both Leo and this neon-drenched world to the screen. If you haven't yet, I highly recommend that you check out his previous sci-fi tales, both Moon and Source Code (which put Jake Gyllenhaal through the wringer of a complicated time loop). They are an excellent foundation for the type of story that Jones tells in Mute.

We are in a golden age of sci-fi storytelling, with directors like Denis Villenueve resurrecting Blade Runner after his own tours through the brilliant and challenging Arrival. In theaters, Ex Machina director Alex Garland is stimulating audiences with his upcoming adaptation of Annihilation. While on Netflix, the anthology series Black Mirror examines technology's vice grip on our society, and the ill effects it can have.

Mute joins these ranks as a rewarding trip through an original future that asks bold questions and delivers blockbuster thrills. And soon, you will be able to see for yourself. Netflix members will be able to stream Duncan Jones' Mute when it releases on February 23. Do you think you will give it a try?

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Netflix has made sweeping changes to the theatrical-distribution model that catered to the film industry for decades. Because the streaming service has access to a substantial, built-in audience, Paramount can sell them a Cloverfield sequel AND make it available almost instantaneously, as The Cloverfield Paradox did for viewers on Super Bowl Sunday. Similarly, the benefits of the Netflix model are creating new advantages for filmmakers, as Mute director Duncan Jones recently revealed to CinemaBlend that he no longer has the stress of opening-weekend expectations, because he's not going theatrical. On the eve of the release of Mute, Duncan Jones explains:

Duncan Jones was opening up about his sci-fi thriller Mute, which opens on Netflix on February 23. That day, the original film -- which has a loose tie to Jones' previous sci-fi drama Moon -- will be available to all Netflix subscribers in the U.S.

I was asking Jones what he used to do on opening weekend to keep himself busy when he had a new movie reaching theaters. In talking about his process, Duncan Jones also realized that dropping a film right on Netflix means that the marketing needs of a theatrical release don't factor in, so a movie's secrets can be protected until the movie is viewed. He elaborates:

Mute has plenty of secrets to reveal, once the audience is able to see it. In the movie, set in a sci-fi future, a mute bartender (Alexander Skarsgard) gets involved with two seedy criminals (Paul Rudd, Justin Theroux) when his girlfriend goes missing. It's a movie Duncan Jones has been trying to make for 16 years, and he tells us that without the freedom of the Netflix model, he'd never be able to deliver Mute in the version that he prefers. Jones says:

Duncan Jones' Mute will be on Netflix on Friday, February 23. To get a sense of the world, watch this trailer:

And to stay up to date on all the movies and TV shows reaching Netflix in the coming months, bookmark our up-to-date guide.

Netflix has long been known as a disruptor in the entertainment world. The development of original content has upended many traditional ideas about film and television, with Duncan Jones' film Mute standing as one of the platform's most highly-anticipated upcoming releases. Much discussion has been had about the role of Netflix in the modern entertainment landscape, and according to Jones, Netflix is an essential tool because it has helped create a new landscape for mid-budget films like Mute. In a recent interview, the Moon director explained:

Hollywood has changed in recent years, and it's not nearly as common to see a movie made for a medium-sized budget as it used to be. In fact, if you look at some of the most successful films of the last few years, they often fall into the range of a massive blockbuster in the vein of Star Wars: The Last Jedi or they're movies made for incredibly small budgets, such as a horror movie like Get Out. Mid-range films don't get the kind of theatrical play that they used to, which is why streaming services have become so invaluable to directors like Duncan Jones who want to make a "creative" movie of that scale.

Despite the opportunities, Duncan Jones' comments about working with Netflix also highlight some of the drawbacks. A movie like Mute won't receive a home release push on Blu-ray, for example, and a Netflix release means that the bulk of audiences will see it on home screens instead of big screens. That said, Jones also made sure to note in his interview with Uproxx that a film like Mute would've never gotten made without a platform like Netflix, so the benefits likely outweigh some of the drawbacks.

Of course, to get a better sense of what makes a movie like Mute so risky, you should also know what it's about. Taking place in Berlin in the not-too-distant future, the film focuses on a mute man named Leo (Alexander Skarsgard) in a desperate search through the criminal underworld to find his missing girlfriend. The film appears to play like a neo-noir thriller in the vein of Blade Runner 2049, except it doesn't have a franchise name backing it up.

Mute will be available to stream on Netflix later this month on February 23. As for the rest of 2018's major movie debuts (theatrical or otherwise), check out our comprehensive movie premiere guide!

Though it received a lot of attention early on for its incredible use of digital effects and its closeness to the source material, Warcraft was just another in the long list of video game movies that flopped upon its release...if you only look at the domestic box office that is. Internationally the film cleaned up -- especially in China, where it broke box office records. Those good numbers are enough to make a sequel possible, but is that actually going to happen? Director Duncan Jones is down, but apparently, the ball is entirely in Legendary's court.

Warcraft may not have been very popular on the whole, but that doesn't mean that it lacks any fans. One Twitter user alleged to having seen the fantasy flick four times in IMAX (sheesh, man), and he's biting his nails waiting for a sequel. Duncan Jones responded to his tweet sharing his excitement for a second trip to Warcraft, but unfortunately, it's not up to him. Legendary is the one who calls the shots, and it's the studio's decision if they want to pursue another entry. It's really anyone's guess right now what their attitude towards a sequel is, but perhaps fans can take solace in knowing that Jones would be happy to answer the call should he get one.

It's pretty debatable as to whether or not a Warcraft 2 is somewhere down the road. The film was gored with bad reviews as sharp as any sword, but reviews aren't really the top concern to a studio -- if it were they would have stopped at Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. No, money tends to be the deciding factor (it is a business after all) and Warcraft did make a lot of it. Though the film flopped in the U.S., it was a record-breaking five-day debut with $156 million earned in China. Globally, the film has earned more than $430 million. The audience is certainly there for a Warcraft 2.

If Legendary does decide to greenlight a Warcraft sequel they could choose to go the Resident Evil path in how they release the movie. Resident Evil is another franchise that gets most of its box office from foreign markets. Therefore, it does most of its promotional material overseas, a strategy that has proven effective given that mostly foreign markets pushed it to become a $1 billion franchise. Warcraft could certainly opt for a similar strategy.

As of now, Legendary has not said anything about a potential sequel to Warcraft, but the option seems to be on the table with no shortage of source material for a sequel to take inspiration from. Keep checking back in with CinemaBlend and we'll keep you updated on all things Warcraft as soon as that information becomes available.

It's unfortunate that it is unclear if a Warcraft sequel is happening. However, if you are looking to add the original to your dvd or blu-ray collection, you can check that out here.

This past week brought big news on the cinematic Green Lantern front. It was announced that Warner Bros. and DC Comics have made some big moves in development of 2020's Green Lantern Corps, and have hired a writing team to take care of the script. Fans obviously have high expectations for the project - particularly after the debacle that was the 2011 effort - but one filmmaker who is a bit pessimistic about the feature is Warcraft director Duncan Jones.

With the Green Lantern news spreading this past weekend, the filmmaker took to his personal Twitter account to explain why he has a few issues with some of the inherent elements of the sci-fi hero. Specifically, he doesn't quite understand why every ring-bearer isn't completely unstoppable, given their access to a weapon that allows them to legitimately conjure anything they want. Furthermore, he believes the best way to tell the story would be to focus on a protagonist who has to overcome his own limited imagination in order to fulfill his destiny as the titular space cop. He wrote:

Much like those who criticize Superman for being invincible and therefore boring, this isn't an entirely new complaint about Green Lantern - and it's completely applicable to some of the early Hal Jordan stories from the comics (where the creations of green energy were legitimately limited). That being said, artists and writers in the more modern era have crafted new and creative plots and concepts that have significantly advanced the character - including the idea of multiple rings from the emotional spectrum - and have helped Green Lantern overcome some of the inherent narrative flaws.

That on the table, if Duncan Jones wants to read about a hero who can only conjure original ideas with every use of power, he should look into the Marvel comic The Runaways - and specifically Nico Minoru. She wields a magical weapon called The Staff Of One, and while it is immensely powerful, it has the caveat of only being able to cast a spell a single time. As a result, carrying it requires a certain amount of originality and creativity.

We may never see Duncan Jones' vision of a Green Lantern movie on the big screen, but for now David Goyer and Justin Rhodes are making 2020's Green Lantern Corps as a Lethal Weapon-inspired buddy movie centering on Hal Jordan and John Stewart. We don't know much about the project beyond that, but you can be sure that you will find regular updates about the production here on Cinema Blend as they become available.

Warcraft was one of the most divisive films of the year in a number of ways. Not only was its paltry domestic gross of $47 million dwarfed by its international haul of $386 million, but also some moviegoers failed to be enchanted by its fantastical tale and spectacle while others appreciated it as joyful escapism. Considering these polarizing views, you'd have thought that Duncan Jones might be tempted to release a director's cut of Warcraft to win over some of the naysayers. But Jones has now revealed there couldn't possibly be a director's cut of the film, because there is no more additional footage to add. He explained:

While talking to Thrillist, Duncan Jones admitted that there just wasn't room in the budget to work on the visual effects for scenes that may or may not have made the final cut. While it's always interesting to see what filmmakers decide to leave on the cutting room floor there really wouldn't be too much point in seeing a director's cut of Warcraft anyway. Viewers that failed to be enamored by the video-game adaptation aren't likely to be won over by further footage of the orcs and humans being torn apart by their differences, while, as someone who enjoyed Warcraft much more than other critics, even I found that it repeatedly teetered on the edge of tedium. Elongating it even just a little would almost certainly push it over into this territory.

The big question now is, "Will we get to see a sequel to Warcraft?" The conclusion of the blockbuster certainly left the door open for further installments, while Duncan Jones himself has previously teased that he'd like to return to the world, even though he's currently hard at work on his next project, _Mute. _

Unfortunately, having grossed just $47 million in the U.S., it's unlikely that Hollywood will try too hard to pursue it. However, since it broke box office records in China (where it took in $220 million) and the likes of Ukraine, Germany, and Russia, too, there is clearly an appeal. Now it's up to the producers and the team over Activision Blizzard Studios and Legendary to figure out how to tap into that enthusiasm... if they tap into it, at all.

While North America did not get particularly excited about the Warcraft movie, overseas, especially in China, the box office went nuts. With the growing importance of China as a box office power, would that be enough to make a sequel happen? Early signs point to yes, as a recent post on the film's Chinese social media site seems to imply not simply that a sequel could happen, but that it will happen.

Warcraft's domestic box office has yet to break $50 million, even though the film has been out for over a month. By contrast, in China, the movie made a $145 million in four days. Globally, Warcraft now stands as the most successful video game movie of all time. All of this has put the film in a unique place. The movie was a hit, but not in the place where people green light movies. However, it appears that sequel plans may be moving forward thanks to the success in China. A recent post on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, was recently posted, and translated, on the World of Warcraft Reddit page, and it tells fans to be ready for more.

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While the translation is certainly rough, the intent seems clear. The post is not saying that more movies may be coming down the line, but rather, it says that they are. It's fitting that China would be the place that this was announced. One would have to assume that whatever the plan for more Warcraft films, they will be geared toward success in China more so than the west. While movies have been trying to add things in order to appeal to the nation for years, this could be the first time that a major motion picture produced in the west is really made for the Chinese audience. It's believed that China will soon become the largest segment of the global box office. Warcraft could very well be the beginning of that shift.

Warcraft certainly left itself open to potential sequels. It took the majority of its content only from the first Warcraft video game, Orcs vs. Humans, which means that there are several real-time strategy games, as well as the massive World of Warcraft universe to mine for more material. How a Warcraft sequel created for China, where World of Warcraft is still a massively popular game, would differ from the first film is unclear. We would certainly expect it to make some changes based on the audience.

Would you be excited to see a Warcraft sequel? Let us know in the comments.

Warcraft has been in theaters for almost a week, and while the movie definitely looks visually magnificent, it's largely gathered negative reviews from critics (though has done wonderfully financially in China). This news obviously isn't great for director Duncan Jones, but in the midst of the critical reception, what he probably didn't count on was a journalist weirdly walking out on an interview with him. The nearly-six minute interview can be viewed below, but if you want to skip to the awkward walk-out, it happens at the 5:40 mark.

The interview started off reasonably well, with the journalist, Adam Rosser, reasonably asking Duncan Jones if he thought that Warcraft should have been a story told over multiple movies. However, as the interview continues, it's clear that Rosser didn't care for Warcraft, and makes his dissatisfaction with the movie clear over several minutes, like questioning whether Jones was the right man for the job or stating his problem with the character Medivh. Jones handled himself well, providing articulate explanations for why he made certain creative decisions. Then right before they hit the six minute mark, Rosser abruptly stops, looks offscreen, picks up his things and bids goodbye to Jones, leaving the director with a puzzled expression on his face, uttering, "...Okay?"

This interview by itself is weird enough, but as Independent noted, things got especially ugly when Rosser received abuse and death threats from fans online, leading him to delete the official version of the interview from BBC's iPlayer. Here's the tweet he sent as a response to those critiquing him.

As far as the interview itself goes, it certainly was uncomfortable to watch. While it's certainly okay to dislike a movie, Adam Rosser's Warcraft questions and comments seemed a little too hostile for the professional setting. However, his peculiar way of conducting the interview is no excuse for others sending him abusive comments and threats. Finally, there's that exit at the end, which, no matter what way you look at it, was definitely awkward. To be fair, these junket interviews usually only last between 5-10 minutes, depending on the outlet. So while it technically might have ended at the right time, the way Rosser left made it seem like it was unplanned, like the way he thanked Duncan Jones as he was walking away, as if it was an afterthought. Whatever was truly going on here, Rosser made his issues with Warcraft perfectly clear to Jones and the rest of the world.

You can judge Warcraft for yourself now in theaters, but let us know what you think about this bizarre interview experience and its aftermath in the comments below.

The Warcraft movie had a lackluster opening in North America, however, overseas the film has been setting records. This means that a sequel is much more likely than we would have otherwise thought. We've seen situations before where the Chinese box office has turned lackluster films into successes, but this may be the very first time that foreign success has made a film that would have otherwise bombed a bona-fide hit.

We know that Duncan Jones is interested in making another Warcraft movie, and with the money that the movie made in China, we're sure that Universal is also interested. Rather than simply making a sequel for the sake of the box office, here are the ways they can make Warcraft 2 a better movie overall:

Have A Main Character

One of the problems that Warcraft had was that the film lacked focus. Not having a dedicated lead is ok, if you have an ensemble cast working together. However, Warcraft has so much going on in so many places that the structure doesn't work as an ensemble, either. If Lothar is our story's hero, that's fine, but then focus on telling the story from his perspective. We know that Warcraft is steeped in lore, but the audience only needs to know the parts that are vital to the story being told. Pick a perspective, and stick with it.

Include Other Races

The Warcraft movie is primarily based on the first game created by Blizzard, subtitled Orcs vs. Humans. However, the movie still teased us a wide variety of races that we never really met. If the world is full of dwarves, elves, and gnomes, then let us meet them, because they might be more interesting than the humans. The world of Azeroth is vast, but it didn't really feel like it in this first movie. We know the races become more important in the future games, so let's make sure that carries through to the film.

Increase The Naval And Air Combat

One of the things that Warcraft II added to the game series was combat, both in the air and on water. Since the movie was based on the first game, it chose to limit its action sequences to the sort of thing we might have seen in the first game. The film had beautiful flying mounts, and some action scenes in the air with them could be amazing. Likewise, some seafaring adventures would not be out of place. The highpoint of Warcraft was the digital effects and motion capture work that ILM did for the film. Let's see what they can do to take it to the next level.

Let's Get To The Burning Legion

In the opening voiceover of the Warcraft movie, it is already intimated that there is an outside influence pulling the strings in the battle between the orcs and humans. This external force, known as the Burning Legion, needs to be brought to the forefront soon. Warcraft ended with a brewing war between two sides, both of whom are mostly sympathetic, as we know they don't really want to fight. Even those who only saw the movie know the fight between orcs and humans is not what this story is about, so show us the real enemy and let's get to battling it. Another movie about people being manipulated will get very old, very fast.

Make Better Use Of Go'el

While Warcraft did a remarkable job of making the mostly digital orcs relatable, the characters that we got came from a culture that was very alien. Go'el the son of Durotan was introduced in the first film as an infant, and while he's an orc, he will grow up among humans, making him more relatable than his father. At one point, Go'el was meant to be the focus of a scrapped Blizzard game, called Warcraft Adventures. How about we dust off some of that material as a way to get to know this character a little better?

Lean On The Story Of Arthas

Because the first Warcraft movie gave us an ending that was less-than-subtle about a future installment, we wouldn't expect Warcraft 2 to be any different. The story arc of Arthas, the crown prince of Lordaeron, is one of the most popular that the game series has to date. He deserves his own film, and while that film probably won't be Warcraft 2, the movie could still introduce him, as a setup for a potential third film. We don't have to leave Warcraft 2 with the half ending that the first one gave us, just drop the character in. Fans will understand, and the rest won't need to, unless a third film actually happens.

Making a successful, well-regarded movie based on a video game is a difficult enough task in and of itself, however, in order to do that, Warcraft had to overcome another hurdle -- making viewers relate to characters that they would only see as CGI creations. They’ve done this by relying heavily on motion-capture in order to create the film’s orcs. Sometimes, however, motion-capture wasn’t quite enough. One key fight scene had to be entirely animated because the actors couldn’t quite pull off the moves that the director needed.

When Warcraft director Duncan Jones needed cutting-edge motion-capture technology in order to translate the actors' performances directly into the CGI characters they were portraying, he went to one of the top effects companies in the world, Industrial Light and Magic. Earlier this month, I had a chance to talk to several of the visual effects specialists responsible for creating Warcraft, as well as Jones himself. While virtually all of the orc performances in Warcraft did use motion-capture, Duncan Jones says that one major action sequence, a fight between the orcs Durotan and Gul’dan, had to be handed over to the animation team, because the motion-capture didn’t quite work.

While traditional computer animation is used throughout Warcraft, its primary purpose is to polish and fine tune the motion-capture data. It was very important to Duncan Jones that the actors' performances come through onto the screen as much as possible. To that end, actors Toby Kebbell and Daniel Wu, who play Durotan and Gul’dan respectively, did fully perform the fight sequence themselves, but apparently upon review, it was decided that the scene needed a little something extra. The scene was then given over to Hal Hickel, the film’s animation supervisor.

The press in attendance at ILM for the Warcraft event got to see a little bit of the fight scene in question, and I have to say, I’m not sure it would have been possible for any human to pull off the moves the way that they’re handled on screen. The pair are quite acrobatic considering their size. They also move incredibly quickly. While something like that could have been handled by playing with the speed in post-production, it may have been difficult to get the proper fluidity due to the motion-capture equipment. You have to figure that performing a fight scene with a bunch of motion-capture tech strapped to your body probably doesn’t help your mobility in any significant way.

While the actors’ work won’t be shown off in this one particular scene, the rest of the film will be a showcase in ILM’s ability to turn a human into a CGI orc without losing the emotion or nuance of the performance. Warcraft arrives in theaters on June 10.

Since founded by George Lucas in 1977, in order to create the effects needed for the original Star Wars, Industrial Light and Magic has been at the forefront of making the impossible look real on movie screens. Their current "impossible" task has been to make the Orcs in the Warcraft movie come across as real, relatable characters. Interestingly, the strides that ILM has made in making these giant beasts come to life has helped them make great strides in an area of digital effects that has proven incredibly difficult, to create a realistic digital human.

I had the pleasure of spending an afternoon at Industrial Light & Magic’s campus in San Francisco earlier this month, and as part of that I met Hal Hickel, the animation supervisor for Warcraft at ILM. Hickel told me that one of the great difficulties in creating the Orcs for Warcraft was that the characters were essentially too human. All of the difficulties that come with creating digital humans on screen -- realistic hair, skin, etc.-- were still issues when creating the Orcs. The plus side to that, however, was that everything they were able to do to overcome those difficulties will be a great help the next time they try to create a digital person, something they are apparently actively working on right now.

The place Hal Hickel is trying to climb out of is called the "uncanny valley." It’s the idea that when trying to create a digital or animated character for the screen that looks and moves like real people do, you can reach a point which is simultaneously quite real, but not real enough. The result just looks...wrong. Think The Polar Express or the digital version of Jeff Bridges from Tron Legacy. Both were great advancements in digital effects, but also somewhat unsettling.

It seems counter-intuitive that creating digital creatures who have hands as large as their heads would help ILM make serious advancements toward making realistic humans, yet as somebody who has now seen the Orcs on a movie screen for extended periods, I have to admit, what they’ve done is impressive. The Orc's faces are very much like those of people, and that’s where the advancement in realism has taken place. The eyes look alive, not vacant. The faces look like human faces, even if they're green and their mouths are full of tusks.

We’re certainly curious what future project Hal Hickel is talking about. Industrial Light & Magic is always working on digital effects for numerous features, so there are numerous places this character could appear. I’ll be keeping my eyes open for it as, if the Orcs are any indication, this character could revolutionize digital effects.

The fantasy genre is one of the oldest and most thoroughly explored styles of storytelling that there is. From Lord of the Rings to The Hobbit to the Harry Potter films, there have been films that transport audiences to outlandish worlds and tell stories about the triumph of good over evil. However, that style of storytelling does not always mirror the world we live in. The upcoming Warcraft adaptation seems poised to change that by injecting serious moral complexity into a normally black and white genre.

In a series of new interviews with IGN, the cast and crew behind Warcraft revealed that part of bringing this specific universe to the silver screen was predicated on the idea of a morally grey story. The basic premise of the film revolves around conflict between humans and orcs when the latter invades the former’s home, the realm of Azeroth. While the orcs are a warlike race and indeed invading a peaceful land, director Duncan Jones stated in his interview that he essentially wants to make their reasons for doing so relatable, and get across the notion that not all orcs and bad, and not all human characters in the film will be morally righteous. According to star Ben Schnetzer:

As a general rule of thumb, most "bad guys" in fantasy films are often the grotesque, barbaric race while the "good guys" or often portrayed as humans – or at least more similar in appearance to humans. For example, the Lord of the Rings franchise also featured orcs, but spent very little time exploring them or their reasons for engaging in war – instead relegating them to the role of minions driven by bloodlust. Warcraft will deviate from that formula by framing the conflict between humans and orcs in a manner similar to the historical conflict between Native Americans and white settlers, with atrocities occurring on both sides. Check out the entire featurette for Warcraft below to get a better sense of how the film will blur lines of right and wrong.

Moral complexity of this nature has become an increasingly common trend in other genres. Superhero films have undergone a similar metamorphosis in recent years by having audience members essentially choose sides when it comes to heroes they are siding with. This trend will come to a head with the upcoming releases of Captain America: Civil War as well as Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

We will keep all of you Warcraft fans updated on any and all developments related to the project. The film version is scheduled to hit theaters on June 10, 2016.

When your goal is to adapt a video game full of fantasy creatures into a movie, it’s a forgone conclusion that you will need to use CGI. When the full trailer for Warcraft hit, we certainly saw a lot of it. A full half of the characters are Orcs, and they certainly were not guys in rubber suits. The resemblance to Avatar, where nothing looked real, was obvious. It turns out, however, that quite a bit more of the movie is done with practical effects than it appears at first glance.

According to actress Paula Patton, just because shots meant to be external were done on a soundstage, doesn’t mean that what was on the soundstage wasn’t real.

io9 spoke with several of the films actors while at Blizzcon and several of them spoke at length about the real sets and effects that were used to give the film world of Azeroth a sense of place. Dominic Cooper, who plays King Llane in the film, said that director Duncan Jones always kept the character and the story at the forefront. As easy as it would have been to get lost in the scale of the thing and all of the digital effects, Jones was always focused on the characters.

As vital as the CGI is as a tool to tell the story in Warcraft, it is just that: a tool. It’s not the goal. Based on the trailer it looks like the practical and digital effects have been blended very well, thus the reason so many looked at the trailer as a mass of computer effects. In this case, it seems that the need for practical effects was less for the audience and more for the performers. By creating the world in real, tangible pieces, the actors could feel more like they were really there. This, one expects, leads to better performances from those actors since they didn’t have to perform to something invisible. This isn’t the first time, even recently, that we’ve seen the effect that a real set can have on real people.

So Azeroth exists in places other than inside a computer. We’ll find out how real a place it truly is when Warcraft is released next summer.

We’ve been hearing about the Warcraft movie for quite some time, and recently, we finally got our first look at the new film when the first trailer finally hit. Now, as with Star Wars, we’re finding new footage by tracking down clips meant for other countries. Much like the overseas trailer for The Force Awakens, the international Warcraft clip gives us not only new scenes to fawn over but new details that we didn’t have before. Check out the spot below.

Being a TV spot, the clip doesn’t give us nearly the detail that the full trailer did, and much of what we do see is in the U.S. trailer. However, there was something else at the end of the spot that wasn’t in the domestic trailer. If you don’t speak French, you may not have noticed it.

While the line is simply French for "the beginning" it is an interesting addition. While there has already been talk of additional Warcraft films, there’s been nothing official to tell us that they are actually happening. By calling this film the beginning, there’s a not-at-all-subtle implication that there will absolutely be more movies. It’s possible something has been greenlit since the first trailer, and all future advertising will include the same tagline. We’ll have to wait and see if we get future ads in English that use it.

There’s also a brief scene in the TV spot that also gives us an implication that there may be a bigger story to tell. While the trailer only showed us the human and orc armies separately, this clip actually shows them coming together to do battle. While it may seem like the most obvious thing in the world, what we gathered about the plot from the trailer implies that the film is about humans and orcs coming together to fight a new evil force. We’re used to seeing these massive fantasy battle set pieces as the big finale to epics like The Lord of the Rings. While it’s possible that this human v. orc battle scene will actually be early in the movie (how epic is this film going to be if that’s the case?), it also may be that we won’t even get to the human/orc unification in this movie. They may be saving it for a later one.

Warcraft is a huge property in some circles but it doesn’t have nearly the wide reach that a J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy does. Is moving forward on more Warcraft movies this quickly a good idea?

Video game movies don’t exactly have the best track records in Hollywood. While it’s true that there have been more than a handful of financially successful titles, to date there has not been a single one that has received a majority of positive marks from professional critics. There are surely many different theories to explain this - from incorrect interpretations of specific elements, to the talent level of the individuals involved with the various productions - but Warcraft star Robert Kazinsky has a theory of his own to explain why they’ve all been disappointing: the approach towards attempting to jam hours and hours of storytelling into a feature-length narrative.

Back in March of 2014, I joined a small group of other journalists to visit the set of the still-in-production Warcraft film, and it was while sitting down for an interview that Kazinsky revealed his thoughts on the history of the video game movie genre. The actor – who plays the Orc known as Orgrim in the blockbuster – was asked about any specific details from the source material that needed to be tweaked in order to better fit the feature format, and he used the question as a launching point to discuss why it is that we haven’t actually seen a good movie based on a game just yet:

Robert Kazinsky went on to admit that there were, unfortunately, elements of Warcraft that needed to be changed for the movie, and some specific and interesting details had to be skipped over. He lamented that they weren’t able to make something 50 times as long with all of the material, but even admitted to himself that it wouldn’t necessarily be watchable. Said the actor,

The good news is that while the Warcraft film doesn’t include every single little detail featured from the game, Robert Kazinsky still feels as though the film has pulled out what is really essential about the long-running franchise, and is an experience that both gamers and non-gamers alike will be able to appreciate:

We’ll find out if Warcraft has what it takes to end the bad streak of video game movies when the film arrives in theaters on June 10, 2016.

The upcoming Warcraft movie is being made by many people who absolutely love the game on which the film is being based, but few would argue that there is anyone more passionate than Robert Kazinsky. As it turns out, the English actor playing Orgrim in the upcoming feature is actually one of the top World of Warcraft players in the world. Of course, this fact alone didn’t qualify him for the role, but it certainly opened a door, as it was coincidentally playing the game in front of one of Warcraft’s producers that started him on the road to being a major part of the production.

Back in March of 2014, I joined a small group of other film journalists to go to the set of Warcraft while it was still in production, and it was while sitting down with Robert Kazinsky that he went into detail about his passion for the video game, and the interesting path he wound up on to get his role. It all began on the set of Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim - in which Kazinsky plays Australian Jaeger pilot Chuck Hansen – and a slow day during filming. Wanting to kill some time, the actor pulled out his laptop to play some Warcraft… and he just so happened to be sitting next to the exact right person:

After that, Robert Kazinsky would regularly bug Jillian Share about the development of the movie, regularly looking for updates, asking if he could see a script, and just asking to be somehow involved (he told us that he would have been willing to just be Paula Patton’s purse-holder during production). Eventually he was able to convince her to let him record an audition for Duncan Jones, and then meet with the filmmaker – and it worked out so well that he is now playing one of the lead Orc roles in the Warcraft movie.

Watch the trailer again:

This may seem just like a silly and fun story, but Kazinsky stressed that being a part of the blockbuster was actually tremendously important to him. He has dedicated a significant portion of his life to the expansive video game, and sees being part of the first film adaptation somewhat as justification for all those efforts. He explained,

Of course, we only have the highest hopes that the quality of Warcraft will match Robert Kazinsky’s passion level. We’ll find out when the blockbuster arrives in theaters on June 10, 2016 – and in the meantime stay tuned for more of our coverage from the set!

We got teased earlier in the week that our first real look at the Warcraft movie was on its way. As part of Activision Blizzard’s Blizzcon the first trailer has now been officially released and we’ve had our first real look at the long-gestating CGI world of Azeroth. It’s big and bold and quite pretty. Check it out for yourself.

The world of the orcs is under attack and they find themselves in the realm of man looking for a new home. Man, as it turns out, is not particularly interested in sharing their world with these "beasts." Whatever it is that’s put the orcs on the run is not resting however, and in order for any of them to survive the two sides must join together to fight this new threat.

Well, we can’t say they haven’t gone big. While this movie is obviously taking several cues from The Lord of the Rings in terms of its style the fact that the orcs are major characters rather than simply enemies to be defeated makes their realism vital. Overall we’re impressed. It was a bit concerning at first that we never really see the orcs and people in the same shot. While we only ever get a single brief shot of the two together, the shot we do get works well enough.

The baby orc in one scene is very green which is noticeable because the rest of the creatures don’t really look that way. They look like real creatures, not cartoons. Seriously, that baby is jarring though.

Duncan Jones has been promising not just a good movie but a great move for two full years. Expectations have been high enough simply because the property was so well known but Legendary Pictures wants to turn Warcraft into the next big fantasy epic. They’ve certainly created a unique world here replete with all of the people and creatures one is likely to come across while traversing the World of Warcraft. The scene with the flying mount is like something straight out of the game though it looks significantly more badass than it does on the PC.

Now that you’ve had your first real look at Warcraft are you ready to travel to Azeroth?

You ever get the impression the studios are just messing with us now. It used to be that our first look at a film would be a teaser trailer. A short clip that would give us little to no information about a film, other than make us aware it existed. Now, trailers have become such a big deal in the progress of a movie that we now get trailer teasers. These are even shorter clips that inform us that we’ll get to see a longer clip sometime soon and try to build excitement for the trailer alone. Commercials for commercials essentially. Alright, you win. I’m in. The trailer teaser for the Warcraft movie has been released and I’m officially on board.

Fantasy landscape? Check. Warriors doing battle? Yup. Epic flying mounts. You bet. Ok, this Warcraft movie might be everything it’s cracked up to be after all. While we won’t be seeing the full trailer until Friday, this teaser is certainly a step in the appropriate direction. If you’ve been waiting to see what a Warcraft movie would actually look like, even this 15 seconds is enough to give you a solid idea. While we’ll have to wait and see if the massive amount of CGI holds up to long-term viewing, the world certainly appears vivid and real. We even get a quick glimpse of who we’re going to assume is Orgrim, though he’s mostly in shadow, and even that looks amazing.

While most movies that take this long to get to the screen are stuck in development hell, Warcraft has been in full development for years. The technical aspects of the movie are such that it simply has taken this long to get the film in a state for people to see it. Even before current director Duncan Jones began work on this version of the film, the idea of making a film based on the Warcraft game series has been on Hollywood’s to-do list.

As big as the games World of Warcraft especially are, this was a significantly difficult undertaking. So much of the life and character of the MMO comes from the people that play it rather than the game's actual characters and story, so trying to turn the game into a movie seemed impossible. One way or another, it appears to have happened. Hopefully Friday’s reveal will give us a bit more to go on.

Does the teaser get you excited for the Warcraft movie? Does it look like the epic film you knew it would be, or does it fill you with confidence you were lacking before?

Duncan Jones has been busy working on his fantasy epic, Warcraft, based on the beloved computer RPG, and amidst the panels of San Diego Comic-Con, he had an opportunity to showcase his project to the fans. While those in Hall H got to see some new footage and hear details about what’s coming, Legendary unleashed two new Warcraft Comic-Con posters revealing two new characters: Durotan of the orc Horde and Lothar of the Alliance. Take a look.

Legendary partnered with ILM to create the orcs in a similar style to how the Hulk was created in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Here we see one of them. Toby Kebbell previously had experience with motion capture for Rise and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and here he suits up once again as Durotan. He’s the protagonist of the orc side of the story and he’s the Chieftan of the Frostwolf Clan, battling to save his people from extinction, but that could mean the end of another race of people. 

Enter Anduin Lothar. Played by Travis Fimmel, he’s described as a war hero who has sacrificed everything to keep the people of the realm of Azeroth safe. He’ll face his biggest challenge yet when the orcs arrive. The official plot for Warcraft tells of the orc Horde fleeing their dying world in the pursuit of another. When a portal opens up on Azeroth, they attempt to colonize the land, but at the expense of its current inhabitants. What ensues is a war between the Horde and the Alliance of men. 

Supporting Lothar on the side of the Alliance are Dominic Cooper as King Llayne Wrynn, Ben Foster as the mage Medivh, Ben Schnetzer as the mage Khadgar, Ruth Negga as the Queen of Stormwind Lady Taria, and Paula Patton as the survivalist warrior Garona. On the side of the Horde are Rob Kazinsky as Durotan’s righthand man, Orgrim, Clancy Brown as Blackhand "The Destroyer," and Daniel Wu as supreme orc ruler Gul’Dan.  

Though the film was arguably outdone by the likes of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Deadpool, and Batman v Superman at the panels, Warcraft was a major focus of the exhibition floor. A massive display showcased the film’s glistening armor, to be worn by the Alliance soldiers, as well as a massive statue of Orgrim laying down his hammer on fans trying to snap a few photos. 

Warcraft opens in theaters on June 10, 2016. 

It was two years ago that the Warcraft movie was officially announced at San Diego Comic-Con. Two additional Comic-Con’s in the future and we’re still nearly a year away from the film’s release. However the director is not going to sit around and wait for 11 months for the film to come out, he’s already thinking about what may come next.

Speaking with i09, Duncan Jones (The Source Code), the director and co-writer of Warcraft, had some exciting comments for fans waiting patiently for the movie. It’s nearly done, it’s good, and he wants to make more.

Jones is so confident that Warcraft is going to be a great film that he’s interested in continuing with the franchise and working on one or possibly two sequels. He says that he and Chris Metzen, the head of franchise development for Blizzard and the man responsible for the story of the film, have an idea for a story that could be told over three films.

From his comments, however, it sounds like nothing is being greenlit at this point because Legendary Pictures wants to wait and see how the first film actually does before moving forward. Jones does seem legitimately excited for the future of the franchise. Having already committed so much of his time, yet being willing to jump back into it for two more movies, certainly says a lot about his dedication and enthusiasm.

Certainly the idea that sequels might happen is no great surprise.  It’s actually more surprising, and a little comforting, that there are apparently no specific sequel plans already. These days it’s much more likely that multiple films are planned and then canceled if the first film doesn’t work out. Actually waiting to see if the movie is a success first is hardly standard operating procedure in Hollywood..

There’s one guy who doesn’t have to wait to find out if the movie is good and that’s the director himself. According to Jones, the film is actually very nearly done, with only a handful of VFX shots are left to complete. A number of people have apparently seen the nearly finished film and if they are to be believed, and the director says they are, the movie is going to be great. We really want to believe him. Up to this point the best cinematic adaptations of video games have qualified as "acceptable" at best. We’re still waiting for a great one, and maybe this is it. Certainly the costumes are looking good.

If Jones is right, then the sequels will almost certainly be on the way. With a finished film that’s going to sit in a can for most of the next year, the only question is will the producers actually be able to wait for the film’s release before moving forward with the series.

Warcraft hits theaters June 10, 2016

It's crazy to think that someone is making the online RPG computer game Warcraft into a live-action movie, but Duncan Jones, Legendary and Universal are doing it. As you can imagine, a movie with orcs, mages, elves and all other manner of fantastical creatures running around requires masters of the visual effects craft. That's where Warcraft takes a nod from Hulk in the Avengers movies, with the help of ILM.

Industrial Light and Magic, a visual effects company that worked on making the Hulk the giant green rage monster that he is on screen, came aboard to engineer the look of the orcs. If you think these barbarian beasts look anything like Bruce Banner's alter ego, you'd be right. In an interview with Wired, Jones said that Jeff White, who worked on the creation of Hulk for The Avengers, was on set to supervise the motions of the actors. As such, Jones said that the orcs "feel like they may have some of the same genetic background as the Hulk."

We got our first look at Orgrim, righthand man (or, rather, orc) to the horde Chieftan Durotan, not too long ago, and you can definitely see the resemblance to his CGI inspiration.

Robert Kazinsky, who you've seen as Warlow in True Blood and a Jaeger pilot in Pacific Rim, portrays this character through motion capture, a technique that's being utilized more and more since the great Andy Serkis astounded the world with his unique performances. Jones said ILM was incredibly passionate about working on Warcraft. Though he didn't mention Weta, their rival VFX company, he did say that since they've been involved with a lot of kaiju- and superhero-based projects, they wanted to work on something like this to prove "they are still the best in the world at special effects."

Warcraft also stars Dominic Cooper as King Llayn Wrynn, Ben Foster as the mysterious mage Medivh the "Guardian," Paula Patton as the strong-willed Garona, Tobey Kebbell as Chieftan of the Frostwolf Clan Durotan, Ben Schnitzer as a young mage Khadgar, Clancy Brown as feared orc warchief Blackhand "The Destroyer," Ruth Negga as Lady Taria, Daniel Wu as orc leader Gul'dan, Travis Fimmel as the warrior Anduin Lothar.

Specific details of the plot are still under wraps, but the overall story will feature an epic battle between "The Alliance" of men and mages and "The Horde" of orcs and dark magic. Since the latter are CGI blood relatives of Hulk, we expect there will be a lot of smashing going on.

Warcraft is scheduled to hit theaters on June 10, 2016.

Star Trek 3 is going through a heck of a time landing on a director. Even though a shortlist of filmmakers was only revealed earlier this week, one of the individuals has already publicly and gracefully declined the offer. Duncan Jones, who is most notable for directing the imaginative films Moon and Source Code, recently tweeted out this message regarding his feelings on directing Star Trek 3:

Well then. I guess that’s that. It's worth mentioning at this point that reports have said Duncan Jones wasn’t the top dog on the list, as it looks like Paramount is courting The Rise of the Planet of the Apes director Rupert Wyatt most heavily. Still, Jones seems to be ending the Star Trek 3 conversation before it can really begin.

So what is Jones working on next? Surely there has to be something in the works if he's passing up Star Trek, right? For the time being, he’s currently in post-production on Warcraft, a feature-length adaptation of the insanely popular videogame of the same name. Beyond that, it seems that Jones has two pet projects he intends to focus on once he finishes his work on his big fantasy epic - as he noted on Twitter:

One of those pet projects is believed to be Mute. Jones has been working with Glenn Fabry (cover artist for Hellblazer and Preacher) for a decade now to adapt the story into a graphic novel, and ultimately a feature film. Mute is set in the future and centers around a bartender incapable of speech who enters into the world of crime to track down his kidnapped female friend. There was talk for a while about making Mute the second in a very loose trilogy beginning with Moon, though there hasn’t been any trilogy chatter lately. We'll have to wait and see if any news comes from his work on the project.

With Duncan Jones removing himself from the picture, it looks like Paramount has four other very strong names to pick from on their released shortlist (six if you include fan-favorite Jonathan Frakes and my personal favorite, the ever-amazing Edgar Wright). According to previous reports, Rupert Wyatt is being considered along with The Imitation Game's Morten Tyldum, Safe House's Daniel Espinosa, and Fast & Furious 6's Justin Lin. After bowing out of his directorial duties on Star Trek 3, Robert Orci made it very clear that Paramount still intended to release Star Trek 3 on time, and start production next year. Hopefully Duncan Jones removing his name from the short list means we are that much closer to an official director announcement and maybe even some plot details.

Though there isn’t an official release date, Star Trek 3 is aiming to hit theaters in conjunction with Star Trek’s 50th anniversary in 2016. If you want a taste of what might have been, you can see Duncan Jones’ latest project, Warcraft, when it hits theaters on March 11, 2016.

Duncan Jones is one of the most promising young filmmakers in Hollywood. After making his debut with Moon and following it up with Source Code, he's now wrapped up in Warcraft, the big fantasy adaptation slated for March 2016 - and after that, who knows how many sequels and spinoffs he'll be attached to. Of course, maybe Jones is just using the goodwill from the video game movie to pursue one of his passions, specifically Mute , a project he started developing a long time ago.

Straight from Jones' Twitter, he gives an update on the film that might just be wishful thinking, or it could be much more.

Does Mute live? and what is Mute? Jones' sci-fi script has bounced round Hollywood for while, set in a futuristic Blade Runner-esque world where a woman disappears in Berlin, forcing her close associate, a mute bartender, to enter a world of crime to find her. Jones' original plan was to turn the film into a Dark Horse comic , ideally to revisit and actually film it at a later point... but Warcraft was an offer the son of David Bowie (uh-huh!) couldn't refuse.

Unfortunately, such are the the limitations of contemporary Hollywood financing, as Jones couldn't find funding for his practical future sci-fi world (this coming after his audacious low budget debut Moon and its follow-up, the $147 million-grossing Source Code). He couldn't even get away with calling it a sequel in a cheap funding ploy: Mute was intended to be the second film in a loose trilogy that started with Moon with Sam Rockwell intending to return in a cameo to bridge the considerable gap.

Then again, maybe it's only a matter of time before Jones is swallowed by the world of franchises and has to do a superhero film or a Star Wars saga movie/spin-off. Maybe Mute falls by the wayside, and Jones pursues other options: his many interviews link the film to Blade Runner, which sounds phenomenal, but you try getting something like Blade Runner greenlit in today's economy, even with a star as big as Harrison Ford. Hell, you can bet that one or two people behind the Blade Runner sequel are quietly saying, "But let's make this one a bit livelier than the last one, kay?" Warcraft opens on March 11th, 2016. Let's hope this is finally the movie that forces Duncan to give his dad a call in the hopes of scoring a theme song. NOTHING would be cooler than a David Bowie theme song.

While it’s true one can’t always base a director’s career solely on his past achievements, there are some assumptions to be made. Following such imaginative and well-crated sci-fi films such as 2009’s Moon and 2011’s Source Code, director Duncan Jones certainly seemed destined for a big budget hullaballoo. So, it’s no surprise that Legendary and Universal’s upcoming video game adaptation Warcraft is taking precedence, and Jones is forced to end his attachment to the biopic Fleming, about Ian Fleming, the famed creator of world-famous superspy James Bond. It’s a shame, as I was kind of hoping he’d add some weird sci-fi twist to the man’s life.

It wasn’t for Jones’ lack of want in helming the feature, but scheduling problems became overwhelming, and no one involved with Fleming was willing to wait. Warcraft is scheduled to go into production in January, and the post-production process will probably take him through the end of the year. It isn’t scheduled to come out until December of 2015, which would conceivably leave part of the year open to get the Fleming project, but producers aren’t willing to let that much time pass. That’s best, as Duncan’s imagination is more geared towards fantasy than biopic, though I hope he returns to the small-budget world after this.

TheWrap reports the hunt is now on for another director willing to tackle Fleming, which is based on the biography of the same name by Andrew Lycett. The story will follow the author’s past as an international spy, which obviously inspired the fourteen novels he wrote about the smoothest and most gadget-friendly mofo in the world. It seems ridiculously unlikely that recent Bond film director Sam Mendes would step in, but that would make for a really interesting parallel with the series itself. The BBC also has a four-part miniseries coming out about the esteemed author and spy next winter. You can see a teaser below.

Speaking recently from Blizzcon, Jones assuaged some fears of the fans of the MMORPG World of Warcraft, stating his film will focus on both the Alliance and the Horde, rather than either/or. As well, he said they’ll be using a lot of motion-capture and will push the envelope for what kind of violence a PG-13 film can get away with.

Below is a trailer for the upcoming WOW expansion Knights of Draenor, which is certain to keep fans interested until Jones’ film comes out.

Made up of a complex lore built over decades, Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft has plenty of material to mine for a movie spinoff. Plus, the franchise already boasts a fan base of more than seven million, subscribers. Then there's even more people who have since its creation in 1994, when it was known as Warcraft. Our resident WoW expert worried the game's world was too broad to properly capture in one film. But writer-director Duncan Jones, who won a reputation with his intimate sci-fi mystery Moon, has revealed a plan for Warcraft that we suspect will appeal to both Alliance and Horde players.

Reporting from Blizzcon, Game Informer revealed Jones led a panel discussion that included some Blizzard representatives. There, Jones told the assembled crowd that he and his special effects supervisor, Bill Westonhofer of Life of Pi acclaim, have been playing the game since its beta version. Moreover, both have high-level characters at present. So, clearly they share a passion for WoW. But when he read the original script, Jones was troubled by how Alliance-heavy it was. He approached the Blizzard execs with changes that would better share the focus between the Alliance and the Horde.

Considering how WoW works, this should come as good news to its legions of fans, who can expect to see a complex portrait of their side rather than a clear depiction of "good guys" and "bad guys." Jones is aiming for the audience to be able to understand and empathize with both sides of the conflict, which will include characters like Lothar and Durotan. Made by invested fans, Warcraft will contain Easter eggs that WoW devotees can enjoy. However, Jones is also aiming to make the overall story accessible to those who've never played the game.

While ducking questions on casting, Jones shared some concept art--which you can see below--and explained the film will be made in the style of Avatar, with human actors interacting with motion-capture created creatures. The filmmaking team onstage also promised the wildly popular fantasy series Game of Thrones would be an influence as well, though how is a little unclear at this point. They could mean in tone, or in the complexity of right and wrong when it comes to the story's warfare. Less likely is that it will match the show in graphic violence as they crew is shooting for a PG-13 rating. However, Jones promised, "You can get away with some shit with PG-13." Still, the panel suggested their battle scenes will look more like Gladiator's, but that film was notably rated R.

Warcraft will begin production in January of 2014, and is set to hit theaters on December 18, 2015.

We've been hearing about a possible Warcraft movie for years and years, but only now does it look as though the project is actually going to become a reality. As part of their deal with Universal Pictures, Legendary Pictures has announced today that the film based on the long running video game is now set to be released on December 18, 2015 - making it yet another big blockbuster addition to a year that is already confirmed to include major titles like The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Batman vs. Superman, Jurassic World, the Terminator reboot, and many more.

At this stage we know very little about the film's story, but the script is being written by Jones along with Charles Leavitt, whose previous credits include the football drama The Express and the Oscar-nominated Blood Diamond. Production on the movie likely won't begin until next summer, though the co-writer/director of the film did premiere a "tone trailer" for the project at this year's San Diego Comic-Con. I was actually present for the unveiling of the footage, and you can read my full description of it below:

What's surprising about Legendary and Universal's release date choice for the film is that the weekend is already occupied by another anticipated title: director Ron Howard's adaptation of Dan Brown's Inferno, which is set to once again star Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon. Fantasy and genre movies certainly do have a strong recent history at the December box office, with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit and Avatar all making a great deal of money in that season, but Warcraft faces stiff competition in a franchise that has already produced two hit movies. As Legendary notes in their official announcement of the release date on Facebook, this move actually "marks the first film dated under the recently formed partnership between Universal and Legendary." Let's hope they know what they're doing.

Video game movies don't exactly have the greatest legacy out there, but if any one can help turn that ship around I bet it could be Jones. With both Moon and Source Code the young filmmaker has proven himself to be a real talent, and he is currently Warcraft's best asset. For those unfamiliar with the director's work, get acquainted with the trailers below.

Director Duncan Jones gave thousands of people a taste of what he has planned for his upcoming Warcraft movie when he played a test footage trailer that aired a couple weeks ago at San Diego Comic-Con, but now it seems as though more details about the long-in-development project have leaked out. Bleeding Cool has posted a few character descriptions and details about the film, and while none of the information has been confirmed and it all stands as rumor for now, it sounds very cool.

For starters, the site says that Jones plans to make the movie as a hardcore fantasy epic, adding about the project, "names are big and a spellcheck unfriendly, there will be mythical creatures all over the place, the magic will flow and so will the talk of prophecies and ancient artefacts[sic]." (And why not? Game of Thrones does it for a few weeks every year and the ratings are through the roof). The new film is said to not be based on the more recent World of Warcraft games, but it will instead be more inspired by the strategy games that were first released in the mid-90s.

The real meat-and-potatoes of Bleeding Cool's post, however, rests in the description of the three lead characters. Right at the heart of the story will be the hero known as Khadgar, " a young consul to the Kirin Tor senate, rulers of the city of Dalaran." Doing his duty for the city, he is assigned to find out who has been committing a string of crimes - but he soon finds that the answer he is looking for lays beyond the city walls.

Working with Khadgar and serving as the character's mentor is Medivh, who is described as a mage who protects Dalaran from demons. BC's report says tbat he can almost be described as "Gandalf meets Captain Jack Sparrow," and adds that Johnny Depp has actually been rumored for the part - though it doesn't sound like anything is necessarily brewing.

The final main character is Lothar, who is the leader of the King's army. He is described as a role that Dwayne Johnson or Mark Strong could play, and that he is a very brave warrior, "but maybe a touch too bold." The King and his lady will also reportedly be parts to play in the movie, but the site doesn't provide any real details about what kind of role they play in the story.

Sources also tell the site that Orcs will definitely be playing a role in the story (it's Warcraft, they kind of have to be there) and that other creatures on the map will include "dwarves, trolls, elves, revenants and wraiths."

Production on Warcraft is scheduled to start early next year, so look for it in theaters sometime in summer 2015. In the meantime, stay tuned over the next few months for all of the updates about the project.

A fantasy adventure movie based on the sprawling world of the online game sensation World of Warcraft has been bumping around for years now. Back in 2006 Steven Spielberg was rumored for the director's chair on a could-be adaptation. Three years later Sam Raimi was attached. But last summer he confessed the movie would be going into production soon, but without him. A few months later, reports of yet another writer taking on the script arose, giving signs of hope to WoW fans far and wide. And then just yesterday the surprising news came out that Duncan Jones of Moon would helm.

I was surprised by this pick, since Jones is better known for sci-fi than fantasy. Would this filmmaker who stood out with a mind-bending low-budget space drama be a good choice for a presumably special effects heavy fantasy epic? Sure, with 2011's Source Code Jones showed he could handle action sequences, but is he ready to deliver on the high expectations WoW lovers are sure to bring to this movie?

I can't say for sure, since I have only a teeny bit of knowledge on World of Warcraft. But I happen to be married to fellow movie lover, and long-time WoW enthusiast who has been playing the games for decades. We sat down to discuss the World of Warcraft movie, trying to figure out if Jones is a good call for director, and if noobs like me should expect to be wowed.

Kristy: So, Zach, first and foremost can you tell me what you think of the idea of a World of Warcraft movie?

Zach: Well, I'm a little bit torn. The world that Blizzard has created is certainly full of potential for interesting stories. But there are a number of possible problems, the most obvious one being the factionalism that is inherent in World of Warcraft.

Kristy: Factionalism? You mean because there are so many ways to play it?

Zach: Not exactly. Warcraft at its core is all about Alliance vs. Horde. A lot of players are fiercely loyal to one side or the other. I think it would be difficult to make a movie that satisfied both sides.

There aren't really clear-cut good guys and bad guys when you are talking about Alliance vs Horde. There is a lot of grey area, unlike in say Lord of the Rings or Star Wars where the villains and heroes are clearly defined. There are some definitely evil forces in the world, like the Scourge or the Burning Legion, but players on both sides of the Alliance/Horde schism think that their side is the good side. So if a movie favors one side over the other, there will be nerd rage storm of epic proportions.

Kristy: Whoa. That was something I hadn't even considered. Well, what is it you'd hope for in a WoW movie?

Zach: It's really hard to say. I never thought they would actually try to make it a major motion picture. I figured it would be niche thing, like a direct-to-DVD animation similar to what DC and Marvel have been doing. Something where they didn't have to establish the world, because their market is already aware of it.

There's just so much backstory, I'm not confident they can parse it in a way that will satisfy many of us who play. You could just make up a story and set it in the world of WoW, but if you're going to do that what's the point of using World of Warcraft as a base at all. Really, without knowing what the story of the movie is about, I have no idea how to wrap my head around it.

Kristy: But I remember you didn't have high hopes for The Hobbit movie either once you heard they were expanding it into a trilogy. But ultimately you really enjoyed that. Do you think they could just make up a story that might have some Easter Eggs to the massive backstory and you'd be game?

Zach: To me what makes WoW interesting is the lore, is the history. If you're not going to really utilize that in a movie adaptation, I don't see the point. Christ, I've been playing Warcraft games since fifth grade, so that's what—twenty years? I don't know how you encompass this expansive world in a single film. But there's a lot of different time periods within the span of these games. Maybe it'd work if they set it during one of the first wars. I just don't know. Tolkien also had a whole world that he established with his works, but again it had a clean story with established good guys and bad guys. WoW doesn't necessarily work that way.

Kristy: I know you liked both Moon and Source Code a lot, what do you think of Duncan Jones directing this movie?

Zach: I think he's an interesting pick. I think his past works show a psychological bent on sci-fi. Basically, the fact that his works have a lot of questioning to them and moral ambiguity to them—I don't want to get into too much to avoid spoilers—

Kristy: Good call.

Zach: But the fact that they chose him, and he has these works that are not clear cut narratives gives me hope. Maybe this will be interesting. Maybe there won't be easy villains in the movie.

Kristy: Do you think there is a way that Jones and Blizzard can make a World of Warcraft movie that will appeal to fans as well as people unfamiliar with the game, but interested in fantasy because of things like The Lord of The Rings movies, and Game of Thrones?

Zach: I'm sure that they can, but I don't know that they can make a movie that will appeal to me. Which is really what I want.

Kristy: Well, I think we'll be revisiting this conversation again as more news develops.

Zach: I think you're right.

This poll is no longer available.

For pretty much as long as this site has been alive, someone in Hollywood has been attempting to make a movie version of World Of Warcraft. The immensely popular game hasn't even gotten a chance to suck as badly as most video game movies have, since it was constantly getting stuck in development and losing producers and screenwriters. But now, half a year after a new writer was hired, a director has finally, officially come on board-- and he's someone who might be single-handedly capable of getting you excited.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Moon and Source Code director Duncan Jones has signed on to direct, and production is set to start in fall of this year. Legendary Pictures, which was behind The Dark Knight Rises and The Hangover as well as the upcoming Godzilla remake, will also finance this one, with a script from Charles Leavitt-- which, of course, is being kept under wraps. The massive stories of the World of Warcraft games allow for endless possibilities, and it's possible that Jones will have a hand in shaping the story now that he's on board-- he was credited with the story for Moon, after all.

Jones has become a favorite among sci-fi fans in recent years, thanks to the inventive takes on the genre in Moon and Source Code and his lively Twitter feed, where he confirmed the news by saying "So the gauntlet was thrown down ages ago: Can you make a proper MOVIE of a video game. Ive always said its possible. Got to DO it now! ;)" Can he do it? Let us know if he's the right guy for the massive job in the comments.

Source Code, one of the best science-fiction actioners from the summer film season, is already headed for a TV adaptation. The Jake Gyllenhaal starring, Duncan Jones directed film is about a soldier who has only eight minutes to solve a terrorist train bombing. Well, eight minutes every time he's reinserted into the source code. Yeah, you may want to check out the film because describing the plot in full may take a while.

THR first reported the news that the Source Code producer's production unit, "Mark Gordon Company, which is locked into an overall deal at ABC Studios, has sold a TV version of the sci-fi thriller to CBS with a meaningful penalty." Gordon already dabbles heavily in TV with shows like Grey's Anatomy under his belt (ugh). However, no one apparently consulted with the film's director Duncan Jones, which is odd considering his talent is a large part of what made the project work in the first place. They should at least offer Jones the pilot to direct if he wants it but judging by these tweets, he probably would amiably refuse.

The Hitchcockian thriller was a hit with both critics and audiences alike, so it's easy to see why the people behind the film are pushing for the adaptation. The premise actually lends itself quite nicely to a television series. I just commented yesterday about the intriguing mix of episodic and serialized storytelling that the new Hannibal Lecter TV show can take advantage of and this seems right up the same alley. Each week a new attack or crime needs to be solved by our 'source code' soldier while the overall narrative trajectory can follow him/her finding out what happened to them and why they suddenly woke up as part of this new program.

Either way, Source Code doesn't sound like a bad idea for a new show and maybe this and Hannibal are just the first few in a new trend, bringing features to the small-screen instead of vice versa.

Director Duncan Jones has been on a beast of a press tour to promote his second film Source Code, crossing all over the United States and moving on recently to Europe and the UK. At some point in his journeys a persistent rumor started cropping up that, when he got back to Los Angeles, he'd be meeting with 20th Century Fox to talk about taking over for Darren Aronofsky on Wolverine.

And it's more than just a rumor-- Empire got him to confirm that the Wolverine gig would be the topic of one of his many upcoming LA eetings, and talking to IGN at Kapow! Comic Con over the weekend, he noted "[Wolverine is] more interesting to me than Batman. A good Wolverine film could be an amazing thing." But then, according to a scooper who wrote in to Ain't It Cool News, Jones suggested during a post-screening Q&A that he was taking the Wolverine meeting mostly out of curiosity and politeness, and was more interested in working on his own script next-- quite possibly Mute, the script he's now planning to develop first as a graphic novel.

Jones is certainly an interesting choice to take over for Aronofsky on Wolverine, another director who got his start in independent films and has a distinct vision (even though I thought Source Code was too generic and beneath Jones's skills, it has enough positive reviews to prove me wrong). But from the sound of it he might be wary of taking on a giant film, particularly one already abandoned by a high-profile director, and one still planning to shoot in tsunami-damaged Japan. It makes for some interesting speculation in the meantime, at least, while we wait for any director to be brave enough to take the project on. Let us know what you'd want out of a Jones-directed Wolverine in the comments, or which directors you'd rather see with the job instead.

If the first trailer for Duncan Jones’ Source Code didn’t hook you, this one most definitely will. Showing off a bit more of what will definitely be a story unlike any you’ve ever heard, this new trailer, which premiered over at HeyUGuys, builds on everything we saw in the domestic trailer a few weeks ago.

There seems like there would be some pretty loose science involved--I mean, why would our hero Jake Gyllenhaal only be able to live the last eight minutes of a man’s life?--but after seeing Jones’ debut effort Moon, it’s hard to believe that he won’t go through pains to make sure the science is all grounded in some sort of reality and explained well enough to eliminate most questions normal movie goers will have..

Scope out the exciting new trailer below.

I for one can’t wait to see what Jones does with more than one actor and a budget more than my weekly allowance when I was 12. Source Code doesn’t hit wide until April 1st, but will be opening SXSW in March.

Want more? Get all the news on Source Code over at our Blend Movie Data Base

One of my favorite films from last year was Duncan Jones' Moon. A tight, creepy science fiction film with an incredible performance by Sam Rockwell that went tragically unappreciated during award season, the movie was only Jones' first feature. Everyone is waiting with bated breath for his sophomore effort, Source Code, and now we know it's been revealed when people will get their first look at it.

Via press release, the SXSW Film Festival has announced that Source Code will be their opening night film when the nine-day festival opens up on March 11 in Austin, Texas. Already set for a wide release on April 1 next year, the movie stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a soldier named Colter Stevens who has become the subject in an experiment. Following a terrorist attack on a train, Stevens wakes up in the body of one of the passengers and has one goal: to find out who's responsible. The film co-stars Michelle Monaghan, Verya Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright.

As always, our venerable leader, Josh Tyler, will be covering the festival for us and will get all of the gritty details coming out of the state that nobody is supposed to mess with. For more info about the SXSW Festival, head on over to their homepage at SXSW.com. You can also check out a new image from the film below:

Source Code is the next movie from director Duncan Jones, the mind behind the excellent independent sci-fi movie Moon. Please don’t tell me you haven’t seen that yet. Netflix, right now, if you haven’t. For this movie he’s leaving near-Earth orbit and hitting the rails, for a time travel movie set mostly on a train. Apparently trains are back in vogue around Hollywood. Source Code is the next, step down the tracks after Unstoppable.

Despite being set primarily on a train, Source Code and Unstoppable couldn’t possibly be any more different. Instead it’s kind of like Groundhog Day meets Déjà vu. You’ll know what I mean after you watch the movie’s first trailer. Watch:

The trailer’s solid if not particularly spectacular. Personally I’d kind of hoped to see something with more visual flair from Jones, who did so much with so little on his last movie, Moon. I liked the script well enough when I read it, but to make it more than Groundhog Day with a bomb, he’ll have to have something special up his sleeve that we’re just not seeing in the trailer. I want to believe it’s there. How about you?

For more on Source Code visit our page in the Blend Film Database.

The big story that broke yesterday was the news that Christopher Nolan has officially begun the search for a Superman director. A short list of five potential directors to take the spot - Tony Scott, Matt Reeves, Zack Snyder, Duncan Jones and Jonathan Liebesman - was revealed and it was an interesting mix to say the least. An argument can be made for every director on the list and an argument can be made against every director on the list. Apparently, word has gotten back to some of them, and now their responses are available.

First up is Snyder, who I feel is the strongest candidate, as his visual style could work perfectly with the storytelling of the Nolan brothers and David S. Goyer. Sadly, it's not to be. A few days before the news broke, Snyder did an interview with Latino Review in which he mentioned that he was approached about the project, but turned the opportunity down.

Next up is Jones, best known for directing last year's critical hit Moon. Coming Soon caught a comment by the director on his Twitter page about the news (it appears to have been deleted since). According to the site, the director said, "About Superman... I'm going to say something really cheesy; Can't talk about it, but an honor to be on the list. Interesting times!" Correct me if I'm wrong, but that sounds like a confirmation to me.

Lastly, JobBlo got a quote from Reeves about the story down at Fantastic Fest in Austin, where his new film, Let Me In, is showing. Said the director, "I was surprised. I really have no idea if any of that is true. It's certainly an amazing project, but I would be surprised..." So pretty much the complete opposite of Jones. It sounds as though Reeves knows nothing about his inclusion, which may or may not mean that his appearance on the list was conjecture.

The only two directors that have not yet commented are Tony Scott and Jonathan Liebesman, but, as I reported in my original article, they are also the two that are already booked on other projects. While I'm sad to see Snyder fade from the project, Jones would definitely be my second choice of the five. I unabashedly loved Moon, and while it was certainly a smaller project than Superman would be, he has shown me enough that I could have faith in him.

The selection process for a Superman director has been as up and down as any casting for a superhero film. Since it was announced that Christopher Nolan would be producing the project, there has been plenty of speculation as to who would take the reins, be it Christopher's brother Jonathan, Chris Columbus or someone else entirely. Apparently the list is down to five.

Deadline has revealed that Nolan and producer Emma Thomas have begun meeting with a short list of directors for the project that have included Tony Scott, Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In), Jonathan Liebesman (Battle: Los Angeles), Duncan Jones (Moon), and Zack Snyder. Some members of the list, however, already have prior commitments, including Liebesman, who has signed on to direct Clash of the Titans 2, and Scott, who has four other projects on his plate at the moment. This leaves Reeves, Jones and Snyder, who appear to have open schedules, though it's possible that this isn't a finite list.

Certainly an interesting mix, no? Fair arguments both for and against everyone above can be made, but I think that the most intriguing one is Snyder. His storytelling skills may not be fantastic, but few directors can spin movies that are as visually beautiful. Throw in the fact that the story is being taken care of by the team that includes the Nolans and David S. Goyer and you may have a fantastic combination. Xerxes can sit on a shelf for a little while. Let's make this one happen.

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/UPDATED-Clash-Of-The-Titans-2-And-Deadpool-Still-Don-t-Have-Directors-But-They-re-Getting-Closer-20421.html

Moon director Duncan Jones has lined up his next project, and he’s sticking with heady science fiction. Variety says he’s helming Source Code, in which Jake Gyllenhaal is negotiating to star.

Minutes after reading this announcement the script for Source Code showed up on my desk. Once I crack it open I’ll be able to give you a more detailed accounting, but in the meantime what we know is that it’s about a soldier stuck in a very unpleasant remake of Groundhog Day. He wakes up in the body of an unknown commuter and finds himself reliving a harrowing train bombing until he’s able to discover who’s responsible for it… or has sex with Andie MacDowell.

Ned Ryerson related humor aside, I’m actually pretty excited by this. Science fiction needs more talent and Hollywood’s best and brightest often make their name in the genre only to quickly abandon it for Oscar-baiting dramas once they make their mark. It’s great to see Jones has more mind-bending, thought-provoking sci-fi up his sleeve. For that matter it’s great to see Gyllenhaal getting back to the world of twisty, smart science fiction. It was after all, Donnie Darko that made him a star. Here’s hoping Duncan Jones finds a way to work in a giant bunny.

Last week we were uninspired by the week's releases and decided to do our top five of the year so far. But this week, The Film Experience's Nathaniel Rogers and I are both over the Moon. The debut feature from Duncan Jones is getting rave reviews most everywhere, and we were inspired as much by the movie's egghead take on science ficiton as the bravura performance from Sam Rockwell at the center.

Check out everything we had to say below in the latest installment of the video show that we still haven't named.

For the last few months Duncan Jones has been relentless in promoting his directorial debut Moon, doing everything from sponsoring giveaways on his Twitter account to sitting down with the likes of New York City journalists and answering endless questions about his sci-fi drama.

Luckily for me and everyone else who talked to him last week, he still doesn't seem tired of explaining why, for his first movie ever, he made a movie set on the moon. I talked to him in a roundtable interview and later one-on-one, and what you see below is a combination of the two interviews. We talked to him about how he came up with the story for Moon, why he simply he had to work with Sam Rockwell, and how you create a convincing lunar landscape on a $5 million budget. Oh, and I asked him about Twitter. Obviously.

Look for the spoiler warning near the end, since that's where we get into some pretty specific details about Moon. The movie comes out this Friday in New York and L.A., and will be expanding all over the place from there.

I wanted to ask you about Twitter. That works for you, right?

I like it. Originally getting involved with Twitter, I didn't know that much about it to begin with.

How long have you been doing it?

Two or three months. I started doing it, very Machiavellian, I thought it was important to start letting people know about the film. i wanted to do anything I could . You start doing it, you start talking to the same people more and more. We have a lot of fun on Twitter. I don't know them in their entirety as real people, but I get a real good sense of a lot of personalities out there. There are people that I like, and people that I like talking to. I do think there is a certain reality to the relationship. It's not the same as meeting in person, but that doesn't mean that it's not a relationship. We have a little community.

How did you come up with the idea for this?

I came up with it because I wanted to work with Sam Rockwell. I met up with him three years ago. We talked about another project, which was too ambitious for a first feature film. We just couldn't convince each other, but it was good, because it wasn't the right film to do as a first film anyway. I was a huge fan of his, and thought he was an amazing actor. Meeting with him in person, realizing what an incredibly cool guy he was as a human being, I knew he was the person I wanted to work with on my first film. There was this period of science fiction films from the late 70s and 80s, films like Outlander and Silent Running, and all the ones that we ended up paying homage to in Moon. We wanted to make a film that felt like it fit in that canon of films. So Moon was something that I immediately started thinking about after that meeting.

What were some of the qualities about Sam that you just had to work with?

From seeing him in films like Charlie's Angels through to seeing him in Lawn Dogs, Green Mile, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind-- the guy just oozes charisma. He's so interesting, and he's quirky, but even if he's quirky, he's not a caricature. You can feel and see the human being behind it. That's what I love about Sam Rockwell. There's not a lot of guys that you could put in Moon. You have to watch him an entire film. You can't afford to get bored of him, you can't afford to get annoyed by him. And I think that's what Sam Rockwell does. I think that's why I love him so much. I think the improvisational nature of the way he approaches acting helps with that.

The fascination with the cosmos really seems to run in the family. [Jones' father is David Bowie] Did your father's work inspire you at all?

It really didn't. I know it's difficult to believe. It didn't even occur to me until after we finished the film. My parents divorced when I was very young. Fairly unusually, I was given into the custody of my dad, so I grew up with my dad. So a lot of the things that he was listening to, and the films he was watching, influenced me. We have a very big shared pool of influences. The whole idea of alienation and isolation, which obviously he investigated in his early-mid 20s, I went through in my own way. I was at graduate school at Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee, and spent three-years feeling like I was on the far side of the moon. It's no coincidence that Sam's three-year contract is the same as my three years of graduate school. I went through my own experiences that informed my own feelings about alienation and isolation.

What were your influences in designing the costumes?

You have to have a spacesuit, and that's so expensive, and so hard to do. We were looking at different designs for spacesuits from other science fiction films. Ridley Scott's Alien had a really great suit towards the end of the first film, with Sigourney Weaver. That suit was kind of a starting point for us, because it's so simple. The texture of the suit has all of these ribbed shapes on it, and we had this kind of ribbed look from the inside of the base, this padded cell look. so there were all of these looks that we tried to incorporate. We had a costume designer named Jane Petrie. I believe she worked on 28 Weeks Later. Basically all of the heads of department that we got were well known in the industry for doing amazing things for no money. That's how we chose the people who got involved.

It feels safe to assume that Kevin Spacey was never on the set. Did you end up feeling like an actor yourself, to play off of Sam?

I'd love to know what Sam feels about that, but I certainly did. There was some method directing going on there. The whole period of writing the film and making the film, I had this horrible, heartbreaking long distance relationship I was going through. I actually let it keep going, because I wanted to feel that way the whole time I was making the film. That really helped me while I was talking to Sam, because Sam was also going through a long-distance relationship with his girlfriend. You know, I kind of tried to look a little bit like him. I had the same bushy beard when he had the bushy beard. I thought it was useful. You're right, he had no other actors to talk to or to deal with, or to just relax with. So he was very isolated. The set itself was a 360-degree set with a roof on it, so when we went into the set and they closed the doors, we were on location. There wasn't a third wall. He couldn't see past the camera and see the studio.

Were you ever worried about giving Sam Rockwell a personality disorder?

We did try to make him uncomfortable. The character is called Sam. That was kind of the initial thing in the script, when he was reading the script, to be faced with his own name. I kind of like the idea of Sam being maybe a little bit uncomfortable, having to face himself. That's part of the point. Beyond the science fiction setting the idea of anyone of us here having to face ourself, and deal with ourselves, and realize what it's like for everyone else to have to deal with this person.

How did you choose Kevin Spacey to be Gerty?

The thing was, if you're going to put a robot with a voice in a science fiction film, people will think HAL. We do pay homage to a lot of science fiction film, and that is kind of our 2001 homage. But there's no point recreating the same character and making them exactly the same. Otherwise you really are just ripping them off. What I wanted to do is for science fiction people, allow their expectations to be set up at the beginning of the film, let them make those connections with HAL. He's got the same kind of honeyed voice but slightly malevolent tone that HAL has. The thing is it's not creepy, it's actually just a voice. Over film history we've learned to associate that voice with a moral ambiguity. HAL's got it, and Kevin Spacey's got it. I wanted that from Kevin Spacey, because I wanted the audience to get the wrong idea up front, and assume that Gerty was going to be just another evil machine. That was kind of why Kevin Spacey was perfect.

Can you talk about the filming of the moon surface itself?

We went incredibly traditional. We used model miniatures. We built a 30 foot by 40 foot lunar landscape in a soundstage, next door to where our base was. We had these beautiful little models, sort of Tonka truck style, that were being pulled with fishing line over the landscape. We had an amazing cinematographer who came in just for the model miniatures shoot, a guy called Peter Talbot. He came up with an equation that would give us exactly the right frames per second that we needed to make the models seem like they were life-sized, but also take into consideration lunar gravity. We had kind of a two-layer process. We shot as much as we could in cameras, and we added all these effects and beautification processes on top of it to end up with this hybrid look that we wound up with.

We've all seen old science fiction movies where people worked with models, and it looked kind of hokey. How did you work with them within your own vision of space?

I did have the opportunity to create this hybrid look of using live-action elements and then adding computer generated effects and production techniques on top -- [it's] something I've had the chance to do in commercials a couple of times. So I really had had the opportunity to hone it a little bit, so that put me in a good starting position for doing the special effects on Moon. I had some fantastic people I was working with. The four of us worked very closely together, for the model miniatures in particular. There's certain bits of wisdom that were were able to use and be aware of, from guys like Bill Pearson, who worked on the original Alien, that maybe people who do model miniatures are not aware of. It's so important to get the frames per second right. The placement of the camera in how you shoot model miniatures is also really important. Model miniatures can look really bad really easily, and it does depend on this expertise that you only get if you do it over a period of years. There was really a high period of practical effects that kind of disappeared when CG took over. They had reached the point where practical effects could look fantastic, but it was only after years of experience. It's not surprising that some of the old Star Trek stuff looks so ropy. It took time to develop the techniques, and to have the expertise to get it right. It wasn't until the late 70s early 80s when they actually had really kind of mastered it. Then everyone went to CG, and all the craftsmen who had that expertise kind of disappeared. Because of the uniqueness of Moon, and the fact that we were able to get these old-time experts, we were able to use their experience to get it right again.

Do you think the pendulum is swinging back toward using models?

I hope so. I'm not convinced. I certainly think that independent films like mine certainly give a new lease of life for some of these experts. The problem is there's not actually that many of them left. A lot of the techniques are going to have to be re-learned. The best thing we can do is find these old guys and talk to them and get as much information as we can out while they're still around. It's going to save us years of trying to rediscover it all.

Do you have a dogma either way? Do you support one or the other?

No, not at all. My look is generally quite hybrid anyway, between live-action and CG. I'm incredibly excited to see what Jim Cameron does with Avatar, that's going gung-ho with the CG side of it. But I am one of those people who sees it purely as a tool. There's no point doing a special effect in a particular way, just because you want to use those particular technologies. You use it because it's the right tool for the job.

How close do you think we are to the future seen in Moon?

It is a slightly different future. I think it could still be a future. I consciously didn't put a date on it, because I wanted to leave it a little bit amorphous, and leave it in this non-time. The next film I'm hoping to do is this thing Mute, which is another science-fiction film but a city-based film, kind of a future thriller. Based in a future Berlin. And that film is supposed to take place within the same timeline as Moon. Maybe when we're making that, by force of necessity we might have to narrow the time down a little bit. It's going to have a Blade Runner feel to it.

What about Escape from the Deep?

I didn't put that press release out. Escape from the Deep is a fantastic book. It's based on a true story, incredibly well-researched. I'm hoping that the script is as good as the book, because I love the book. It is an incredible true story. It's a long way away. I'd love to do it, I hope I get to do it. But Mute is a script that its out there, that actors are reading right now. I would assume that Mute is likely to happen first.

BIG MOON SPOILERS AHEAD

A lot of people who have seen the movie have complained about the trailer, because they think it gives away a spoiler. I wanted to know what you thought of it.

Although I didn't make the trailer, I think they did a really good job. Even if it does give a little bit away, I think it at least gives people an interest in seeing what the story is. There is more to it than that. The reason I don't mind people talking about the fact that Sam plays multiple parts is that we do actually give that away at the end of the first act. It's quite early on in the film. Although it's a lovely reveal, I think for an audience that knows nothing about it they're going to get a different experience than someone who does know about it. I don't think that we've ruined the film for them.

The end of the movie is surprisingly optimistic. I was wondering why you wanted to give us that hope.

I did want it to be a slightly hopeful ending. Obviously Sam I's ending isn't quite so hopeful, but he's doing it on behalf of someone he thinks of as a brother. But Sam II has a hopeful ending. We did try doing it without the radio chatter on the end, and it felt so somber and so dark, and it just didn't feel appropriate. We really had tried to build up this film where you have these highs and lows, and I really wanted a sort of up ending. As an audience we kind of deserved that. We want Sam to do well. I thought that was appropriate.

So you see the future as having hope?

Yeah. I think Ridley Scott has been asked this about Blade Runner, why he crated this dystopian future with Blade Runner. And his answer is that he doesn't think it's dystopian. He thinks it's just the future. It's not a particularly bad place, it's not a negative place. It's busy, it's highly populated, it's very multicultural, but there's nothing wrong with it. And I agree with him. I'm not one of those people who sees Blade Runner as being dystopian. I see it as just an interesting, vibrant, busy future.

UPDATE: You may have read about this on CHUD during the Tribeca Film Festival, but hey, we have quotes!

Last week word got out that, for his next project, Moon director Duncan Jones would be adapting the non-fiction book Escape from the Deep, the story of a group of men who escaped from a sunken submarine. But when I talked to him later that week during a roundtable interview for Moon, he was much more focused on his long-planned project Mute-- and revealed that Sam Rockwell will likely be part of that film too.

No, he won't be starring in it, but you can probably count on seeing Rockwell's face in the futuristic thriller movie that Jones compares to Blade Runner in tone. To explain why Rockwell will be in it, though, Jones gives up a MAJOR SPOILER FOR MOON, so don't read ahead if you don't want to know.

"I wanted to get Sam to come and do a cameo in the next film. We're going to do a cameo where he does an epilogue scene that explains what happened to Sam when he got back to earth [at the end of Moon]. That's going to take place in the next film. "

Jones says he thinks Mute will happen well before Escape from the Deep, given that actors are reading the film's script already. Those of us who have already seen Moon know that Jones, who co-wrote the Mute screenplay, has a singular vision of the future. I can't wait to see what he comes up with.

Moon is atmospheric and creepy, and definitely worth your time once it finally drifts into theaters. It stars Sam Rockwell as an astronaut stranded, alone, on a lunar mining station and if you’ve been following any of our early year festival coverage over the past few months then you know it’s pretty good.

Below we have four clips from the film for you, giving you a sampling of the weird world of Moon. You’ll also get a taste of the film’s score, which I spent at least a day humming softly to myself after seeing the movie. Check out the clips and make sure you're back here later in the week, when we'll have an exclusive interview with director Duncan Jones. Moon floats into select theaters from Sony Classics on June 12th.

Clip 1

Clip 2

Clip 3

Clip 4

While most films being shown in the Tribeca Film Festival are looking to reel in distributors, Moon is one of the lucky few that already has a release planned. After chatting with the film’s director, Duncan Jones, who also happens to be David Bowie’s son, I can see why. Jones is so passionate about this project, and about film in general, that the thing has to be good. My festival experience may have been consumed by red carpet coverage, but this is the one film I made sure I was seeing before the festival’s end.

Jones talked a bit about what drew him to filmmaking, how he came up with the plot of Moon and how terrifying but exciting it is to be part of the Tribeca Film Festival. Sting, whose wife, Trudie Styler is one of the film’s producers, took a quick trip down the carpet followed by the movie’s star, Sam Rockwell. Unfortunately, Rockwell arrived a bit too close to the film’s start time to answer all of my questions, but he did tell Reel Talk how excited he was to be part of a film festival in his hometown and about the film’s eerie storyline.

Last night I took off my standard-issue blogger sweatpants, brushed my hair for the first time in days, and joined the real world at an after party for Moon, Duncan Jones' spooky sci-fi movie starring Sam Rockwell as a lonely lunar miner. The movie premiered at Sundance but has also been getting great buzz at Tribeca in advance of its June 12 release from Sony Pictures Classics.

As for the party, it was held in an underground catacomb-type place (975 Bar) that might have been an old meat locker, given its location in the Meatpacking District. Also, there was a table reserved for Sting. No seriously!

Sting didn't show, unfortunately, but Sam Rockwell was seen around the premises, and hey, the martinis were free (thank you alcohol sponsors Heineken, Stoli and Kim Crawford!) Attending the party probably means I should finally write about the movie, which I saw last week and have been recommending to pretty much anyone who asks. Josh wrote about the film at Sundance, and like him, I have to be really, really careful not to ruin any twists.

Because Moon is typical sci-fi in that it twists in directions you don't expect, but very atypical sci-fi in that the gadgets and robots aren't really part of the story at all. The movie is entirely about Sam, the miner who is near the end of his three-year deployment on the moon, and is nearly out of his mind with his desire to get back to his wife and kid. His only company these three long years has been Gerty, a barely anthropomorphized robot who speaks in the calming, authoritative voice of Kevin Spacey. Even the live communication link to earth has been disabled, meaning the only contact Sam has with humans is pre-recorded messages.

Suddenly, step by step, things start to go wrong. Checking on one of the mining devices Sam crashes the rover, and wakes up back on the base, tended to by Gerty, good as new. But soon it seems his replacement has arrived early, a replacement who looks exactly like him. And the communication snafu that has cut him off from Earth all these years might not be what it seems.

Even when the story falters a bit, lingering on twists that we've long seen coming and glossing over other key pieces of information, the technical accomplishments of Moon are consistently dazzling. Made for less than $5 million, the movie is utterly convincing with its lunar setting, a mining outpost that's both pull of technological power but also a little dingy and worn out. And it's hard to talk about Rockwell's performance without spoiling things, but suffice it to say the indie actor already known for powerful performances really puts himself over the top here. His character vacillates constantly between complete confidence and despair, and Rockwell is along for every mood shift, every new revelation. The movie, in its plot inconsistencies and slightly wishy-washy ending, could have fallen apart with Rockwell, but instead remains mesmerizing throughout.

As with so many almost-great movies I've seen at Tribeca, Moon is the director's debut, and all the more stunning for it. Jones not only has the chops to make a great director, he's got the ideas, the interest in the inner workings of personality and memory and nostalgia that has made great fodder for movies for the last 100 years. Rockwell's gamble on a first-time director obviously paid off, and hopefully Jones can take lessons from Moon, recalibrate, and prepare to dazzle us again. And I'm not just saying that because of the free martinis.