Two months after new 20th Century Fox owner Disney called a halt just ahead of production, the motion-capture movie adaptation of David Petersen’s award-winning comics epic Mouse Guard has officially been scrapped. The project was being produced by Matt Reeves with a screenplay by Gary Whitta (After Earth, Star Wars Rebels), and had signed on Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Game of Thrones) and Andy Serkis (Planet of the Apes movies) as voice stars — Idris Elba (The Jungle Book) was also in talks for a role.
Director Wes Ball (The Maze Runner trilogy) confirmed the news via Twitter, sharing a 2’20” video tour of the production offices full of concept art, maquettes and other pre-production materials. “Yes sadly, its true. Our #mouseguard movie is dead,” Ball wrote. “Seems it’s too big a risk. It’s a damn shame really. We had something special. To my hella talented cast/crew: I’m sorry I couldn’t push this one through. The past year with you all has been a blast. May the Guard prevail!”
Yes sadly, its true. Our #mouseguard movie is dead.
Seems it’s too big a risk. It’s a damn shame really. We had something special. To my hella talented cast/crew: I’m sorry I couldn’t push this one through. The past year with you all has been a blast. May the Guard prevail! — Wes Ball (@wesball) June 26, 2019
The film was to have been produced with photorealistic CG animation by Weta Workshop, and a demo reel of animation tests rendered in Epic’s real-time Unity Engine has also been released.
H/T Slashfilm.
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