Concept art of "Traction City"
Peter Jackson and Robert Theon
1905 Film Network News Last October, the news that Universal Pictures and Peter Jackson put the novel "Pulling the City" to the big screen really excited fans. Today, the film revealed its first cast, with Robert Thean and Ronan Rafterry already signed. It is unclear what role the two will play, with sources saying that Robert Thean will play the male lead and Ronan Rafterry will play a supporting role.
Producers Universal Pictures and Media Rights Capital hope to start filming "Traction City" this spring, filming in Peter Jackson's hometown of New Zealand, and set the release date for December 14, 2018. Judging from the existing fixed file information, "Traction City" did not have a strong opponent in the week of release, and a week later, there will be an unnamed Spider-Man animated movie released by Sony, and "Avatar 2" also aimed at next year's Christmas schedule early, but did not rule out the possibility of postponement.
Peter Jackson and his old partner, Fran Welsh, have been involved in the Tow City project from the start, including the purchase in 2001 of the rights to the adaptation of Philip Reeve's novel of the same name. In 2009, word broke that Peter Jackson had secretly developed Traction City, and there has been no further news since then. Until last year, Universal Pictures and Media Rights Capital joined in co-investing in the production of "Traction City", with Universal in charge of global distribution.
Traction City was published in 2001 and has won several awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Guardian Children's Book Award. The story takes place thousands of years later in a future world where cities on Earth move around the earth through track tracks, constantly annexing smaller cities on track for their own development. The male protagonist, Tom Natsworthy, accidentally meets a mysterious woman from the outer realm, and his life has changed completely.
It is reported that the big director Peter Jackson will not direct the film, and the directing work will be given to Christian Revos, who is the visual effects supervisor of Peter Jackson Weta Digital Studios, which will be his directorial debut. Peter Jackson will co-write the screenplay with two female screenwriters from the Lord of the Rings series and The Hobbit series, Fran Welsh and Filipa Bowens, as producers.