Fresh from The International, Tom Tykwer has revealed that he's setting to work adapting David Mitchell's Booker-nominated novel Cloud Atlas for the Wachowski Brothers.
Cloud Atlas is a time-shifting, kaleidoscopic novel - weaving six interlinking narratives, with diverse settings from the savagery of a Pacific Island in the 1850s to a dystopian Korea of the near future. As Tykwer puts it, it straddles genres "from Melvillean high-seas drama to California noir and dystopian fantasy."
In short it's both dazzling and suspiciously unfilmable, allthough Tykwer and the Wachowskis are up for the challenge. As Tykwer said, "I'm really completely excited about it, and I'm sitting down with the Wachowski Brothers and trying to adapt that for a screenplay. It's very interesting."
It's not clear if Tykwer or the Wachowskis will direct, but it's certainly a promising pairing - with V For Vendetta and The Matrix Trilogy behind them, the Wachowskis should make light work of visualising the dystopian and sci-fi elements, which only leaves five other wildly diverse stories to beat into two hours of cinematic sense...
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