THE MAZE RUNNER's Wes Ball had been developing an adaptation of David Peterson's "Mouse Guard" comic series for 20th Century Fox and was just weeks away from kicking off production. The film would have taken place in a world of sentient mice who live in the medieval era and revolved around the Mouse Guard, a brotherhood of mice who have sworn to protect the common mouse against threats of predator, weather, and wilderness. The cast included Andy Serkis (MOWGLI), Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Godless), and Idris Elba (AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR), but unfortunately the film proved to be a little much of a big-budget risk for Disney, Fox's new owners, and they scrapped the project.
Although there was hope that MOUSE GUARD could have found a new home elsewhere, Wes Ball has confirmed that the film is indeed dead. The director shared a video which shows off some motion-capture footage, concept art, and models scattered around the production office.
Wes Ball also showed off a series of tests which explored the visual potential of the MOUSE GUARD movie. It's important to note that this is nothing close to how the film would have looked at the end of the day, but merely an impressive looking pre-viz. That said, it's well worth the watch and will leave you mourning the possibilities of what could have been.
The following is a collection of tests that explore the visual potential of a Mouse Guard movie. Everything you see here is rendered in realtime using Epic's UNREAL ENGINE. Basically what you're watching is very good looking previz, with environments capable of streaming live to stage during motion capture with our actors. While the visual quality is impressive, it's important to note this is only meant to illustrate how the movie will 'feel' not how it will 'look'. Everything will ultimately be sent to WETA Digital to be recreated with cutting-age photorealistic CG. This was made from scratch in about 12 weeks with a relatively small team. Credit goes to our team at Halon (led by Casey Pyke) and Fox VFX labs (led by Glenn Derry)
Gary Whitta (ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY) had penned the script for the MOUSE GUARD movie, and when he heard the news that the project was officially dead, he shared his entire original first draft.
This was certainly a project which I was pumped for, despite initially knowing little about the series on which it was based, and I'm sad to see it go. Wes Ball had said that it was his dream to explore the harsh world of the "Mouse Guard" comics while still appealing to all ages. "I’m not interested in doing a DreamWorks or Pixar-type movie, I’m interested in doing something closer to Planet of the Apes where you’re really gonna nail characters and show the harsh reality of what they live in," said Ball. "It’s gonna be a little bit of both, probably, but at the same time because of the cost I need as big an audience as possible. So I want 10-year olds to see this as much as 40 and 50-year olds, you know? That’s the needle we have to thread, but for me personally… the way Star Wars appealed to me as a kid growing up hit that tone in a weird way. It appealed to the kid in everybody but still took itself seriously. That’s really exciting to me, that kind of film, that kind of target, but obviously set in this really harsh world of mice and swords."