Duncan Jones, the director of science-fiction favorites like Moon and Source Code, is plotting a chart toward new territory with his upcoming animated adaptation of 2000AD’s Rogue Trooper, starring Aneurin Barnard (Dunkirk, Timestalker, Doctor Who) as the lone soldier from the comic book series created by Gerry Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons.
Jones’ Rogue Trooper is an ambitious project built using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5, a gold-standard content creation tool in video games, film, television, and more. According to Empire‘s exclusive report, Aneurin Barnard stars in Rogue Trooper as “a lone survivor super soldier on a mission for vengeance — accompanied, naturally, by a sentient gun, backpack, and helmet imbued with his dead fellow squaddies’ personalities.”
The British Comics Fandom page for the Rogue Trooper comic says Rogue is “one of the Genetic Infantry or G.I.s, bred to fight in the endless war between the Norts and the Southers on the planet Nu Earth. A creation of the Souther side’s scientists at their orbital base, Milli-Com, the G.I.s were genetically engineered to survive unaided in the poisonous wasteland that Nu Earth had become, where regular soldiers could not survive without all-enveloping ‘chem suits’.”
In Jones’ film, Barnard’s Rogue, “finds himself the sole survivor of an invasion force.” He learns that a traitor betrayed his troop, and the quest to discover why and exact vengeance is ready to get deployed.
In addition to Aneurin Barnard leading the long-gestating film as Rogue, Hayley Atwell, Jack Lowden, Daryl McCormack, Reece Shearsmith, Diane Morgan, Alice Lowe, Asa Butterfield, and Sean Bean complete the primary cast. Jones uses Unreal Engine 5’s advanced facial scan technology to capture and apply likenesses to highly detailed digital models, with some scenes ripped right from the comics. Fans of 2000AD’s Rogue Trooper should have plenty to look forward to when Duncan Jones’ adaptation comes to screens, though audiences unfamiliar with the character should still jump aboard.
Are you a Rogue Trooper fan? What do you think about this project’s stacked cast? Are you blown away by what the Unreal Engine 5 program can accomplish in film and video games? Let us know in the comments section below.
