Rogue Trooper has been a dream project for director Duncan Jones for over two decades, and that persistence is finally paying off.
To bring the iconic 2000 AD comic strip to life, the director mashed together every tool in the modern filmmaking kit: Unreal Engine, Maya, classic hand animation, and virtual production sets like The Volume.
Speaking to The Wrap for the film's North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (the film had its world premiere at Annecy International Animation Film Festival), Duncan said he's a longtime fan of the comic series and it was his own personal fandom of the Gerry Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons comic that kept the project alive across two decades.
He humorously also disclosed that he actually approached Finley-Day and Gibbons and Rebellion Developments (who had film rights) in 2001, before he'd ever made a film, and he admitted that he kind of botched the meeting as he showed up with a mohawk, leaving the rights holders unsure if Jones wanted to direct a Rogue Trooper movie or star in it.
Fast forward through a couple of hit sci-fi films, and Jones finally got his shot at redemption. Life came full circle, and he landed the second chance he'd been waiting over 20 years for.
"I was a genuine ‘2000 AD’ fan. I loved the tone of that comic book, it’s always been very satirical and acerbic and punk and political, but funny," said Jones.
He continued, "I don’t think people realize how funny ‘Judge Dredd’ is in the comic books. I wanted to do it. And Rogue Trooper as a character lent itself to the things that I was interested in.”
Jones also told the site that although the project started out in Unreal Engine, he quickly realized that exclusively using the video game engine wouldn't produce a final product that would feel cinematic.
"We were like, This isn’t going to look right, this is not going to work. We actually had to find a way to extract ourselves from Unreal for a while, go into Maya, go into some other tools, and then we came back for a final render at the end," Jones explained.
"It wasn’t the tight straight pipeline that we thought it was going to be, which is why it took like just over four years to make the movie.”
The most important thing for the pic at the moment is to secure a theatrical distributor. Jones wants the film to play in theaters, even if it's just for a limited run, before it heads to streaming.
"I’m not making a studio movie. I’m hoping that they will take confidence from the fact the audience liked it, and people are giving it good reviews,” said Jones.
Rogue Trooper left Annecy in June with solid reviews but no distributor; Jones is hopeful that TIFF yields better results.
Directed by Duncan Jones (Moon, Warcraft), this outlandish animated adaptation of the seminal British comic book follows a clone soldier bred for an interstellar forever-war and his fallen comrades whose personalities live on within his gun, helmet, and backpack.
The film was produced, written, and directed by Duncan Jones.
Aneurin Barnard (Dunkirk) stars as 19 / Rogue Trooper. Hayley Atwell (Avengers: Endgame) voices Venus Bluegenes and Sean Bean portrays (Game of Thrones) Colonel Dicey.
The film also features the voice talent of Matt Berry, Asa Butterfield, Jemaine Clement, and Jack Lowden.