The long-gestating plans to film a movie version of David Mitchell’s book, Cloud Atlas, have been moving forward quickly recently, with the Wachowski siblings and Tom Twyker planning to go into production soon on the ambitious project. The directors will run two parallel units shooting different parts of the film, with actors playing several different roles in interconnected stories that run from the early 19th Century into the sci-fi future of a post-apocalyptic 21st Century.
Now it’s been confirmed that One Day’s Jim Sturgess has been added to the cast. No character details are known but presumably he too will be playing multiple roles. Here’s what the actor recently told The Playlist about the project, “It’s an amazing book. You really gotta stick with it because when it all starts falling into place it’s pretty amazing. [All the actors] play a few characters, it’s very clever what [the directors are] gonna try and do. I’m really really really excited about it. I think it’s going to be bonkers, it’s either going to work or it’s not. I’m really excited to see if we can pull it off, because it’s ambitious what they want to do. And it’s nice, you feel like no one’s ever done that in a film before, it’s like rep theater on a sort of giant movie scale.”
Sturgess will join Tom Hanks, Hugo Weaving, Ben Whishaw, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Jim Broadbent and Bae Doona in the movie, which is due to be released October 2012.