Cloud Atlas: First Stills Released

Entertainment Weekly has posted a whole bunch of images from Cloud Atlas, the ambitious screen adaptation of David Mitchell’s book, scripted and directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski (The Matrix) and Tom Twyker. And if it looks like the pictures come from about five different films… well, that’s the kind of film it is. As the poster blurb says, “Everything is connected.” Well, everything except David Lynch films, which seem to exist in an alternative dimension, anyway.

The film stars Tom Hanks, Hugh Grant, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Ben Whishaw, Susan Sarandon, Jim Broadbent, Bae Doona and James D’Arcy, with many of them playing multiple roles.

The 2004 book, which won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction Award and was the Richard & Judy Book of the Year, comprises six stories, each of which is read (or watched) by the main character in the next. These are:

• The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing, circa 1850

• Letters from Zedelghem, Belgium, 1931 – written by Robert Frobisher, a penniless young English musician

• Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery, California, 1975 – in which Luisa Rey, a journalist, investigates reports of corruption and murder at a nuclear power plant.

• The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish, UK, early 21st century – in which Timothy Cavendish, a vanity press publisher, flees the brothers of his gangster client.

• An Orison of Sonmi~451, Nea So Copros (Korea), dystopian near future – in which a genetically-engineered fabricant  at Papa Song’s Diner (a fast-dining chain), is interviewed before her execution after she rebels against the capitalist totalitarian society that created her.

• Sloosha’s Crossin’ an’ Ev’rythin’ After, Hawaii, post-apocalyptic distant future – in which Zachry, a tribesman living a primitive life after most of humanity dies during “the Fall”, is visited by a member of the last remnants of technologically-advanced civilization.

So, in the absence of any actual captions on Entertainment Weekly, the real fun is working out which pictures belong to which timelines…

We’re guessing this next one isn’t the Pacific journal.

Cloud Atlas is released in the States on 26 October.