Peter Jackson’s ‘Mortal Engines’ for December 2018

Peter Jackson’s Mortal Engines will drop in December 2018. The movie adaptation of the sci-fi fantasy book of the same name by Philip Reeve has been in the works since 2009, and Universal Pictures have now revealed the hotly-anticipated motion picture is scheduled for release on December 14, 2018. Production on the film is expected to begin in 2017 and it’s not yet known who will star in the project.

Jackson is thought to have been interested in adapting the book series around seven years ago but he became side-tracked by The Hobbit film franchise. He went on to helm the three movies in the series, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies in 2012, 2013, and 2014 respectively.

Jackson will co-write the script for the movie and his longtime collaborator Christian Rivers will helm the motion picture.

The Lord of the Rings filmmaker recently said: “Christian is one of my closest collaborators. The combination of emotion and jaw-dropping visuals in ‘Mortal Engines’ makes this the perfect movie for his move into feature directing. What Christian intends to do with Philip Reeve’s terrific story is going to result in an original and spectacular movie. I wish I could see it tomorrow.”

The book is part of a series of four novels, which also includes Predator’s Gold, Infernal Devices, and A Darkling Plain, set in a post-apocalyptic world, where cities including London are run on engines. The series tells the story of protagonist Tom Natsworthy, a teenager who joins forces with a young woman from an area known as the Outlands, to discover a mystery that could change the world they live in.