Sci-fi Noir Thriller MUTE was Originally Written As a Modern-Day Mobster Film

Duncan Jones' 15-year passion project, Netflix's sci-fi noir thriller Mute feels like it could perfectly fit into the Black Mirror universe, but it wasn't originally conceived that way. I recently sat down and talked to the director about the film and he explained that when he and co-writer Michael Robert Johnson first started writing what was supposed to be Jones' first film it was set in modern times.

The project was shelved when Jones and actor Sam Rockwell decided to do what turned out to be Jones' very first film Moon. Then in the years that followed, Jones did two studio films, Source Code followed by Warcraft only to return to his original project to find it slightly dated. 

"We wrote it around the same time that Sexy Beast came out and Layer Cake and these kind of a new wave of British gangster films that were coming out. Guy Ritchie was kind of just making his first film. So it was going to be one of those and then after Moon and the experience I had on that, I looked at the script because I was like, 'OK I'm going to do this next' and it just felt flat to me. I started thinking you know what if this was science fiction instead of contemporary? There's a lot of extra stuff I could pull out of this. So over the years it was just a tiny little British gangster film and but it's had a long period of evolving and being worked on since that change. But it was it was until around 2010 that it kind of became a science fiction film and then it's kind of had a life of its own since then."

Jones went on to say that the beginning of his career may have been much different had he done this low-budget gangster film instead of kicking it off with Moon.

Mute is now available for streaming on Netflix.