A brand new extended look at Mortal Engines has arrived fully loaded with fresh footage. Based on the books by Philip Reeve, longtime Peter Jackson collaborator Christian Rivers makes his directorial debut with the ambitious adaptation.
Peter Jackson co-writes the script with his Lord of the Rings/Hobbit team of Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens. The new trailer does a good job explaining the backstory, and the visuals are breathtaking. That said, I’ve not read the books so only have the trailers to go on. For a $100 million franchise starter, I keep forgetting that this film is a thing that is happening this year, but every time I see fresh footage I’m intrigued a little more.
Universal is hoping that they’ve got the next big fantasy franchise on their hands, so all eyes will be on its all-important opening weekend in December. If they want that to happen they need to kick the marketing machine into overdrive as there are just five weeks to go before release. Oh, and it has one week to bring in the cash before Disney’s Mary Poppins Returns takes ALL the available cinema screens.
Starring Hugo Weaving, Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan, Jihae, Ronan Raftery, Leila George, Patrick Malahide, and Stephen Lang, opens December 14, 2018.
Hundreds of years after civilisation was destroyed by a cataclysmic event, a mysterious young woman, Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar), emerges as the only one who can stop London — now a giant, predator city on wheels — from devouring everything in its path. Feral, and fiercely driven by the memory of her mother, Hester joins forces with Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan), an outcast from London, along with Anna Fang (Jihae), a dangerous outlaw with a bounty on her head.
