Preview for 'Cloud Atlas'

Ever wonder what a corporate-runned futuristic Korea may look like?  Well, here's a preview of Cloud Atlas which has some intriguing ideas for Seoul 2144.  Considering the source material, based on the novel by David Mitchell, the film is being directed by a trio of visually arresting directors: Tom Tykwer with Andy and Lana Wachowski.  The cast is huge and they've been reported to be playing many roles, genders and races.

GTBP recently wrote about the new concept art for Cloud Atlas, I'm just here to deliberate a little more on the film itself and its production.  As you might have read or know, the particular cast includes Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Ben Whishaw, Susan Sarandon, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant and Jim Sturgess.  

Even Ben Whishaw spoke to Vulture about the cast swapping for oddly different roles in every which way:

Everyone in the cast [which also includes Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon, Halle Berry, and Jim Broadbent] is playing at least three parts, some big and some small.  I’m doing three: Frobisher in the thirties; a female American in the seventies, in the Luisa Rey section; and a smallish role, where I’m basically an extra, in a modern-day nursing home, in the Timothy Cavendish section.  Everybody’s swapping race and gender, so it’s very ambitious and quite fun.  I’ll really love playing a woman!

Thanks to /Film, they've helped navigate the particulars to the story, characters and setting:

"There is now one shot that suggests a lot about how the book’s six stories are being visually connected, as it shows the ship from the first tale seemingly approaching the dystopian version of Seoul, South Korea that is the setting for the fifth..."

"...There is also a great concept rendering of Seoul in the year 2144, complete with a high-speed pursuit in progress."

"...And, as a bonus, we’ve got an actual shot of South Korean actress Bae Doona as she appears in the film."

You can see more set photos here and a production-wrap photo with the elusive Wachoswki's, as well as Tykwer, Mitchell and producers here for the production-wrap, all thanks to /Film.

Here's author David Mitchell's take on his story's themes:

"All of the [leading] characters are reincarnations of the same soul ... identified by a birthmark. ... The "cloud" refers to the ever-changing manifestations of the "atlas", which is the fixed human nature. ... The book's theme is predacity ... individuals prey on individuals, groups on groups, nations on nations."

Here's a quick synopsis of Cloud Atlas:

A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan’s California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified “dinery server” on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilization — the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other’s echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small.

The film is set for an October 2012 release date.