Hugo Weaving Joins MORTAL ENGINES
Mortal Engines has just added its fourth wheel and it’s a good one. Hugo Weaving is re-teaming with his Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson for his adaptation of Philip Reeve’s novel.
The story is set in a steampunk post-apocalyptic future where the cities of Earth are on roaming wheels. They attempt to destroy each other in a struggle for limited resources, a system called Municipal Darwinism. In one of the cities, Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan) meets a mysterious woman (Hera Hilmar) who changes his life forever.
Weaving will play Thaddeus Valentine, Head of the Historians.
Joining Jackson in the producer seat is Fran Walsh. Christian Rivers will both direct and produce. Jackson, Walsh and Philippa Boyens wrote the screenplay.
Mortal Engines is the first of four books in the series, followed by Predator’s Gold, Infernal Devices, and A Darkling Plain. The books have won several awards, including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Smarties Gold Award, and Blue Peter Book of the Year.
Jackson and Walsh announced they were beginning production on the first film last October after optioning the rights from Scholastic in 2009.
Weaving is no stranger to film series. Besides his role as Elrond in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit trilogy, he has also played Agent Smith in The Matrix trilogy and voiced Megatron in the first three Transformer movies.
Mortal Engines will soon beginning filming in New Zealand, the perfect location for Jackson and Weaving’s reunion, and will be released December 14, 2018.
