Hugo Weaving Says the Lead Cast Are Playing Six Different Characters in CLOUD ATLAS

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Hugo Weaving Says He's Playing Six Different Characters in CLOUD ATLAS

By Matt Goldberg

Published May 30, 2011

In a recent interview, Hugo Weaving says all of the actors in Cloud Atlas will be playing multiple roles and he'll be playing six different roles.

Speaking to folks who have read David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, there seems to be a shared agreement that they don't know how it can be adapted into a movie. The novel spans across different eras and different lifetimes: "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 film stars Tom Hanks, Hugo Weaving, Ben Whishaw, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, and Jim Broadbent, and all of the actors are playing multiple roles with Weaving revealing he gets to play six different characters. Weaving explained to the Herald Sun [via The Playlist]:

"That’s a project that’s really exciting because all the actors will be playing more than one role I actually have six characters in the same film and they are all different people in six different stories."

The Wachowski Siblings will be co-directing with Tom Tykwer and the ambition of the project makes this a movie to keep on your radar. Filming is set to begin in September for a likely 2013 release. Hit the jump for the synopsis of the novel.

Here's the synopsis for David Mitchell's 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 civilisation — 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.

In his captivating third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity’s dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us.

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