CLOUD ATLAS, an adaptation of the book of the same name by David Mitchell, is the next epic project from the Wachowski Siblings – spanning six time periods and a plethora of characters, there’s just a whole lot of information and dialogue and character development and world exploration and plot to be packed into a single film. So it makes sense that the runtime is currently being estimated at two hours and forty four minutes, and as that’s the length of most director’s cuts it would seem that the Wachowskis are being given free reign to tell this story as they so desire.
You’ll be able to judge for yourself on December 6th, a date that puts CLOUD ATLAS one week after RED DAWN, RISE OF THE GUARDIANS, and PARENTAL GUIDANCE, the same week as HYDE PARK ON THE HUDSON and LES MISERABLES, and one week before THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY.
Plot recap as per Wikipedia: The novel consists of six nested stories that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the nineteenth century to a distant, post-apocalyptic future. Each tale is revealed to be a story that is read (or observed) by the main character in the next. All stories but the last are interrupted at some moment, and after the sixth story concludes at the center of the book, the novel “goes back” in time, “closing” each story as the book progresses in terms of pages but regresses in terms of the historical period in which the action takes place. Eventually, readers end where they started, with Adam Ewing in the Pacific Ocean, circa 1850.