Mute, director Duncan Jones' sci-fi follow-up to his masterful indie film Moon, will have a budget five times as big as his feature debut.
"Moon is about alienation and isolation," Jones told Screen Daily.com, pegging Mute's budget at up to $25 million. "The next one will have a different vibe. It's not about one actor on their own, it's an ensemble piece."
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Stuart Fenegan, who produced Moon, will work with Jones again on Mute, according to Screen Daily.com. He said the follow-up movie, a futuristic sci-fi thriller that will be based in Berlin, is "about a woman whose disappearance causes a mystery for her partner, a mute bartender. When she disappears, he has to go up against the city’s gangsters.”
Moon, a standout sci-fi movie filmed with a relatively small budget of $5 million, is winning accolades for Jones' direction and for Sam Rockwell's amazing performance as a helium miner who runs into a mind-bending head trip while alone on a lunar outpost.
The movie won the Michael Powell Award for Best New British Feature Film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival this weekend.
"We award Moon for its singular vision and remarkably assured direction as well as for the inspired manner in which it transcends genre," reads the festival's jury citation. "The central performance by Sam Rockwell embodies the film's emotional complexity and compelling philosophical perspective."
Jones, the son of sci-fi rocker David Bowie, described Mute as a "city film" when talking with Wired.com during an interview before Moon's release.
"If Moon is an homage to Silent Running and Alien and Outland, then the next one is my homage to Blade Runner," Jones said. "Not the same story, but definitely of the same spirit."
Jones said Rockwell has agreed to do a cameo in Mute that will shed light on what happened after Moon's credits roll. "We will have a little epilogue moment of what happened," Jones said.
Filming of Mute supposedly will start in early 2010. Jones is also attached to direct World War II submarine thriller Escape From the Deep next year.
[via /Film]
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