Halle Berry, Tom Hanks & Hugh Grant star in Cloud Atlas (Dir. Tykwer/Wachowski) | Film News

December 10, 2011 by Cheyenne Davis   

A a star-filled cast including Oscar winning actress Halle Berry, Tom Hanks, Hugh Grant, Keith David​ and Jim Sturgess​, have been enlisted by German director Tom Tyker [Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, The International] and The Wachowskis [best known for The Matrix] to work on new film Cloud Atlas, due to hit screens late next year.

Based on the British Book Awards Literary Fiction Award winning, Booker Prize nominated novel written by David Mitchell the film synopsis describes Cloud Atlas as, “An epic story of humankind in which the actions and consequences of our lives impact one another throughout the past, present and future as one soul is shaped from a murderer into a savior and a single act of kindness ripples out for centuries to inspire a revolution.”
The multi-storylined film has the actors playing multiple roles. “The biggest change for me as an actor is to have two different film units and two different film crews and to go between the two from one day to the next,” Halle Berry told NYTimes.

She described playing “a Jewish woman in the 1930s” for the third director, Tom Tykwer​, then becoming “an old tribal woman” for the Wachowski siblings the next day, and losing track of fellow cast members amid the layers of makeup and costumes.
“Some days I go into the trailer, I’ll be having a conversation — I won’t even know it’s with Hugh Grant until five minutes in,” Ms. Berry said.

Not much has been revealed about whether or not the film will replicate the book in depth or what the film will look like. Having already created a screenplay on the novel, The Wachowskis will surely create a director’s twist to it.
“It looks phantasmagorical,” said Victor Loewy, a seasoned international film distributor who bid on the United Kingdom rights after watching a six-minute clip at the American Film Market in Santa Monica last month. “It’s so unlike anything I’ve seen in 40 years in this business.”
Cloud Atlas expected to hit cinemas in late 2012 will be distributed by Warner Bros​. Pictures. Looks like a good one.