Duncan Jones put himself on the map with his retro sci-fi film Moon. While he went studio with his followup, Source Code, Jones returned to his “Mooniverse” with 2018’s quietly-received Mute. Now, Jones is looking to wrap up this loose trilogy, not on the big screen, but with a graphic novel, titled Madi: Once Upon a Time in the Future.
Jones has teamed up with comic creators Alex de Campi and artists like Glenn Fabry, Simon Bisley, Duncan Fegredo, and Pia Guerra for Madi, which they launched a Kickstarter for. The financing goal was reached in a matter of days. Here’s the story synopsis:
Madi Preston, a veteran of Britain’s elite special operations J-Squad unit, is burnt out and up to her eyeballs in debt. She and the rest of her team have retired from the military but are now trapped having to pay to service and maintain the technology put into them during their years of service. They’re working for British conglomerate Liberty Inc as mercenaries, selling their unique ability to be remote controlled by specialists while in the field, and the debts are only growing as they get injured completing missions. We meet Madi as she decides she’s had enough. She will take an off-the-books job that should earn her enough to pay out her and her sister, but when the piece of tech she’s supposed to steal turns out to be a kid, and she suddenly blacks out…she finds herself on the run from everyone she’s ever known. In a globe-spanning adventure from Shanghai to Soho, Madi has to stay one step ahead of the giant corporations closing in on her from all sides.
Screenrant spoke with Jones, who said there are “a couple of small” connections between Madi and Moon, while there is a bigger one to Mute. He also talked about his reason for choosing a graphic novel to complete the trilogy rather than a feature film…
“I think the reality is that in the world of IP driven content, it’s damn hard to finance an indie at a big-budget level…and if you know my stuff, you know its always going to be a little off the beaten path,” he said. “That said, Madi is a big, old-fashioned action story. The beauty of telling it through a graphic novel is that I needn’t make any concessions to budget or to shooting schedule. No worries over stuntmen getting hurt. No worries about seeking a four-quad balancing act. Instead, I get to experience the very real thrill of learning how some of the best people in the world of comics do their visual ‘floor set.’ That run of visual gymnastics that adds a soundtrack through pictures. Madi is what Alex and I wanted it to be, but it’s also what the amazing roster of artists we are working with conjured up. And being a Brit who was brought up reading 2000 AD, I am getting to work with some of the legendary artists I grew up loving.”
Look for Madi to arrive in November 2020.