Idris Elba linked with highly rated saga ‘Mouse Guard’
‘LUTHER’ and ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ actor, Idris Alba is expected to join Andy Serkis and a star and director from the ‘Maze Runner’ films in a live-action movie about a terrible plot to assault the Mouse Territories.
The actor is joining ‘Mouse Guard’, a new project from ‘Maze Runner’ franchise director Wes Ball.
Ball is steering and helping produce the project, which has already attracted ‘Maze Runner’ co-star Thomas Brodie-Sangster, and ‘Planet of the Apes’ and the ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Hobbit’ saga motion-capture whiz Andy Serkis.
Written and illustrated by David Peterson, ‘Mouse Guard’ takes place nearly a thousand years ago, in the 1100s, in the aftermath of a successful defensive action against the warring weasels.
However, when three members of the protective Mouse Guard are sent on a relatively routine mission to find a missing merchant, what appears to be death from natural causes (a snake) unravels to expose a plot to reconfigure the Mouse Territories around a selfish leader with a secret army.
First published in 2006, the initial storyline’s six issues were then collected as ‘Mouse Guard: Fall 1152’.
Three prestigious Eisner Awards followed for Peterson, as well as a six-issued ‘Mouse Guard: Winter 1152’, the one- off ‘Spring 1153’, six-part ‘Black Axe’, and ‘Legends of the Guard’ anthologies, as well as various art books, figurines, and a wellreceived pen and paper roleplaying game.
While Serkis and BrodieSangster were already associated with the project, Elba is the first linked to a specific character, that of Celanawe, a legendary Mouse Guard veteran now missing and presumed dead.
Elba and Serkis have both been part of the growing Marvel Cinematic Universe, Elba having played Asgard’s bridge guardian and blind seer Heimdall in ‘Avengers: Infinity War’, ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’, and three ‘Thor’ films, and Serkis the weapons dealer Ulysses Klaue in ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ and ‘Black Panther’.
Elba played Shere Khan in Disney’s 2016 movie ‘The Jungle Book’ while Serkis voiced Baloo and directed Netflix’s Warner Bros adaptation of the same story, ‘Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle’.
Elba has also previously voiced characters in ‘Finding Dory’ (the sea lion Fluke) and ‘Zootopia’ (police chief Bogo). — Relaxnews