By Cloud Atlas is probably the riskiest and most ambitious literary adaptation of the year. Warner Bros. picked up the Wachowskis/Tom Tykwer film at Cannes and have it slated for a December 6th release date. The movie runs 2 hours and 44 minutes. The cast includes Tom Hanks, Halle Barry, Hugo Weaving, Susan Sarandon, Jim Sturgess, Hugh Grant, and Jim Broadbent.
I say it’s the riskiest and most ambitious literary adaptation of the year because of the book’s structure: six stories told in six distinct voices and literary styles, each one interrupted and nested into the other and all tied together. As a book it works because author David Mitchell (not David Michod as Collider notes, that’s a much different Cloud Atlas) has a knack for language and little literary games. The Wachowskis and Tykwer probably turned distinct voices and prose styles into distinct visual styles. I wonder if they can pull it off.
Definitely looking forward to the first trailers and posters for the film. If this all somehow works out, maybe The Wachowskis and Tykwer can tackle other hard-to-adapt books, like Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire or Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves.
[Via Collider]