Hayley Atwell has reportedly joined the cast of director Duncan Jones’ animated Rogue Trooper movie, based on the 2000 AD comic strip of the same name. It’s even wrapped filming!
Word that Moon and Source Code director Duncan Jones was attached to a film adaptation of the 2000 AD comic strip Rogue Trooper first broke over five years ago, before the world descended into a maelstrom of global disease, military invasions and AI-driven societal collapse – exactly the sort of dystopian stuff you might expect to find in those British sci-fi comics.
After years of eerie silence, though, it sounds as though the adaptation is much further along than we’d previously thought, with Variety reporting that Rogue Trooper has been cast and is already well into production. It’ll star Aneurin Barnard (previously seen in the likes of Dunkirk, The Goldfinch and Doctor Who) as the title’s genetically-enhanced super soldier. Supporting him will be Hayley Atwell, Jack Lowden (who also appeared in Dunkirk) and Daryl McCormack (Good Luck To You Leo Grande).
As if that wasn’t enough, the rest of the supporting cast reads like a veritable who’s-who of acting talent: the list includes Reece Shearsmith, Jemaine Clement, Matt Berry, Alice Lowe, Asa Butterfield, Sean Bean, and even Philomena Cunk herself, Diane Morgan.
One detail that has emerged in the report – which we don’t believe has circulated before – is that Jones’ adaptation will be CG-animated rather than live action, with the production using Epic’s software platform Unreal Engine 5 to bring the story’s sci-fi future to life. Unreal is more widely known as a game engine, but in recent years it’s grown powerful and flexible enough for use in film and TV production – Lucasfilm used it to help generate the virtual environments seen in The Mandalorian, for example. Presumably, the actors listed above have all been performance-captured using fancy little cameras and things.
“The advancements in Unreal Engine 5 and the inclusion of MetaHuman rigs mean that it is now possible to achieve a very high standard of animation within an indie budget,” Rogue Trooper producer Stuart Fenegan said in a press release. “Working with our amazing partners at Rebellion, Epic and Treehouse Digital we are pioneering and developing a new creative pipeline that will enable independent production of CG animated films.”
Of his upcoming adaptation, Jones suggested that his film will capture the violence and pitch-black satire seen in the original comics – something glaringly missing from the 1995 Judge Dredd (another 2000 AD comic strip) but in 2012’s Dredd.
Said Jones, “2000 AD offers a very different flavour of comic action: Political and brutal at times, but always with a Pythonesque twinkle in the eye. Dredd (2012) was a taste of what 2000 AD has to offer and now we get to show the world another side of the beast. It is a genuine privilege to be given the opportunity to make Rogue Trooper.”
Sounds good to us. In a further surprise, Rogue Trooper has reportedly finished filming at the UK’s Rebellion Film Studios, and post-production is expected to last until it’s ready for release in 2025.
