Duncan Jones arrived at the Annecy Film Festival on June 22 with Rogue Trooper, a feature-length adult animated adaptation of the classic British comic strip from 2000AD. The film is finished and distributor-free. CAA is representing it at the festival.
The story follows Rogue, a genetically engineered super-soldier on the toxic planet Nu Earth, where two factions wage perpetual war. After a violent mission kills his squad, Rogue presses forward with three AI companions stored in his helmet, backpack, and rifle. At two hours and five minutes, the film drew comparisons to Starship Troopers and the work of René Laloux. Deadline's premiere review called it "fast, funny, visually mind-blowing."
Jones built the film over four years on an indie budget, bypassing full motion capture in favor of recording only facial performances and voices. "We weren't recording mo-cap of their bodies, we were only recording their faces and their voices," he told Variety. The cast includes Aneurin Barnard, Hayley Atwell, Sean Bean, Matt Berry, Asa Butterfield, Jemaine Clement, Jack Lowden, and Reece Shearsmith. Production was based at Rebellion Film Studios in the UK, using a pipeline that shifted from Unreal Engine 5.3 to Maya before returning to Unreal for final rendering.
The absence of a release deal is the film's central question. "As an indie film, that's the scary thing because you don't have a studio that's there to make sure that the film gets out there," Jones told Variety. Jones, whose credits include Moon (2009) and Source Code (2011), built Rogue Trooper entirely outside the studio system. How distributors respond at Annecy will determine whether the film reaches audiences this year.