Rumors of The Wachowskis’ next project have ranged from doing a “modern, urban” version of Robin Hood to things that are slightly less ridiculous and awful-sounding, like the “hard-R Iraq war gay love story” Cobalt Neural 9, but throughout there’s been the pervasive insistence that their actual next film would be an adaptation of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. And today, after all that (mostly Halle Berry-perpetuated) speculation, it looks like Cloud Atlas is finally happening, with filming scheduled to begin in September and Tom Hanks officially attached to join a cast that is still rumored to include roles for Berry, Natalie Portman, James McAvoy, and Hugo Weaving, though none of those names have been confirmed. (Or confirmed again, in Berry and Portman’s cases.)
Andy and Lana Wachowski will reportedly split writing and directing duties with Run Lola Run’s Tom Tykwer—a burden that definitely seems like it would need to be shared, considering that Mitchell’s 500-plus-page novel follows the interwoven stories of six different characters across several centuries, including: a 19th-century clerk sailing the Pacific Ocean, a 1930s musician working for a Belgian composer, a 1970s journalist investigating a nuclear power plant, a modern-day publisher on the run from gangsters, a human clone in the near future, and a primitive tribesman living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. No word yet on who Hanks will play, but if we had to guess, we’d say the nuclear power plant.