Director Duncan Jones gives Rogue Trooper update
Duncan Jones is currently celebrating the 10th anniversary of his directorial debut, the Sam Rockwell-starring science fiction movie Moon. But the filmmaker is hoping to soon celebrate the start of production on his latest project, an adaptation of the future-war comic strip Rogue Trooper.
“We’re in the exciting bit right now of concept-arting-out some of the elements of the script,” says Jones, whose other credits include Source Code and last year’s Mute. “The script is really looking pretty good now. It’s getting to the point where we’re going to have to start casting and making the thing. It really does look very good.”
Rogue Trooper is a genetically-engineered soldier whose rifle, helmet, and backpack contain downloads of three fallen comrades: Gunnar, Bagman, and Helm. Created by writer Gerry Finley-Day and Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons, the character originated in the pages of the British sci-fi comic 2000AD, the title which also brought us the iconic Mega-City One cop Judge Dredd. That character was played by Sylvester Stallone in 1995’s panned-by-critics Judge Dredd and again by Karl Urban in 2012’s much more liked but financially unsuccessful Dredd. Can Jones crack the (source) code with his Rogue Trooper film?
“I think we’ve come up with a really smart way to approach it,” he says. “Hopefully, [we’ve] learnt the lessons from previous 2000AD films, where they were either not loyal to what the original comic was, or, in Dredd’s case, just done at slightly too big a budget to actually be successful, even though the film was critically well-received. I think we’ve really kind of nailed this one. So, it looks good. It looks good that we’ll get to make it and I think people are going to really like it.”
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