We’ve had a string of allegedly “unfilmable” books find their way to the silver screen lately. Bennett Miller worked magic on Michael Lewis’ statistics-heavy baseball book. Alex Proyas is about to crack open John Milton’s Paradise Lost, while the creative trio of Tom Tykwer and the Wachowski siblings have put the finishing touches on their shoot of Cloud Atlas, a complicated narrative that spans multiple time periods and connects assorted characters. To celebrate the end of shooting, the crew posted a photo that we’re sharing with you below; click on it to see the larger version at Empire Online:



From left (along the back), that’s producer Uwe Schott, Cloud Atlas novelist David Mitchell, and executive producer Philip Lee. From front left, you see producer Stefan Arndt, director/writers Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski, Andy Wachowski, and producer Grant Hill. The props are bizarre, though they’ll be familiar to anyone who tackled Mitchell’s book. The green Volkswagen Bug belongs to journalist Luisa Rey (played by Halle Berry). In the background, you can see a pair of Chatham Island totems, while the blue plane likely comes from a Korean-based dystopian future.

All of this will make more sense as Atlas unfolds. The movie, due in theaters on Oct. 26, 2012, interlocks six stories from six different time frames. The sprawling cast includes Tom Hanks, Berry, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Hugh Grant, Ben Crenshaw, Jim Broadbent, Ketith David and Susan Sarandon. The cast, alone, gets me into a theater, but I’m also anxious to see how seamlessly the visual storytellers blend their tales together. Plus, I need the Wachowskis to rebound from Speed Racer. This seems like the project that will put them back on top.