Netflix Will Release Duncan Jones' MUTE in Theaters and Online
We've been looking forward to Duncan Jones' new science fiction movie, Mute, ever since he first mentioned the concept publicly. The project is finally filming now, and star Alexander Skarsgard revealed on the Empire podcast that Netflix will be giving the movie a theatrical release and putting it online at the same time.
“I think they’ll do what they did with Beasts Of No Nation,” he tells Empire, "where they do a theatrical simultaneously to a Netflix release. I’ve just got back from Dublin where Duncan showed me all the renderings and the visuals of it and I’m very, very excited about it."
Here's the synopsis:
Berlin. Forty years from today. A roiling city of immigrants, where East crashes against West in a science-fiction Casablanca. Leo Beiler (Alexander Skarsgard), a mute bartender has one reason and one reason only for living here, and she’s disappeared. But when Leo’s search takes him deeper into the city’s underbelly, an odd pair of American surgeons (led by Paul Rudd) seem to be the only recurring clue, and Leo can’t tell if they can help, or who he should fear most.
Empire says the project actually takes place thirty years in the future, not forty, so that little detail may have changed since this synopsis was written. Skarsgard also gave a little hint about his character:
"It’s about a guy who was in an accident as a kid. He’s ex-Amish, so he lives a very monastic life: he doesn’t have a cellphone or anything like that. He’s left the [Amish] community but he still kinda follows the rules."
I don't remember ever hearing about the ex-Amish aspect of this production, but that definitely explains these recent photos from the past few days on Jones' Twitter page:
As usual, a limited release likely means that audiences in big cities like Los Angeles and New York will definitely be able to see the movie in theaters, and for a project like this that sounds so visually striking, I'm hoping people will take the opportunity to seek it out on the big screen rather than stay at home and checking it out that way. Read more about the film and its connection to Jones' 2009 film Moon right here.