David Petersen’s Eisner-winning, creator-owned comic Mouse Guard is going to become a movie from screenwriter Gary Whitta (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story).
Matt Reeves, director of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Cloverfield, will produce (but not direct) the adaptation, with Boom! Studios’s Ross Richie and Stephen Christy, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
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The idea is to use a blend of motion capture and CG to create a live-action movie in the vein of Disney’s recent The Jungle Book. Almost since Mouse Guard began in 2006. but the practical concerns of how to adapt it have always been at the fore of the discussion.
The series, written and drawn by Petersen, centers on a group of mice in the Middle Ages who protect their community from invasions — both by other mice and by outside forces. While there’s no information on the script in the original report, it seems likely that the movie would center on the events of Petersen’s first three miniseries, which take place in the Fall and then Winter of 1152, followed by a prequel that established the backstory of The Black Axe, a mentor-like figure to other members of the Mouse Guard.
“The Black Axe character came to me as the idea of like an Obi-Wan character where the way we were first introduced to this character is as Alec Guinness–the old wise master, and even though he’s this old guy he still went toe-to-toe with Vader,” Petersen told me years ago. “This guy was still pretty cool, still pretty bad-ass. And then with the prequels we see him as Ewan McGregor and we get to see what he was like in his heyday. So that’s what the idea of the Black Axe character was–let’s see this old guy who can still keep up with the youngfurs and go toe-to-toe with the predators. But the idea with the next story, the Black Axe story, was let’s see Celanawe in his heyday.”
Fox, who is also producing films based on BOOM! Studios’ Lumberjanes and The Malignant Man, optioned Mouse Guard. Petersen indicated that more information would be available on Friday night at the Mouse Guard panel at Comic Con, where he says both he and Whitta will be on-hand.
