The following is a collection of tests that explore the visual potential of a Mouse Guard movie. Everything you see here is rendered in realtime using Epic’s UNREAL ENGINE. Basically what you’re watching is very good looking previz, with environments capable of streaming live to stage during motion capture with our actors.

While the visual quality is impressive, it’s important to note this is only meant to illustrate how the movie will ‘feel’ not how it will ‘look’. Everything will ultimately be sent to WETA Digital to be recreated with cutting-age photorealistic CG. This was made from scratch in about 12 weeks with a relatively small team. Credit goes to our team at Halon (led by Casey Pyke) and Fox VFX labs (led by Glenn Derry)

Thanks for watching y’all!

~wes

What is The Mouse Guard?

From Wikipedia:

Mouse Guard is set in a world of sapient mice who live in a medieval era, paralleling the same age in human history, though in their world there are no humans. Its stories revolve around a brotherhood of mice known as the “Mouse Guard” who have sworn an oath to serve their fellow civilian mice in times of need, including making safe passage for them through the wilderness and protecting them from predators.

And the film:

There were plans for Mouse Guard to be made into a film, with Petersen confirming interest from a producer and director. In July 2016, 20th Century Fox announced the film with Matt Reeves as a producer and Gary Whitta as the screenwriter. Wes Ball signed on to direct the film the following year in September. In March 2019, Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Andy Serkis joined the film, with Idris Elba in consideration to join as well. Sonoya Mizuno joined the cast later that month, followed by Samson Kayo and Jack Whitehall in April.

Later in April 2019, Disney (which had acquired Fox that March) halted the project two weeks before production was set to begin, after which it was placed in turnaround. Ball later confirmed on X (formerly known as Twitter) that production was officially cancelled. At the time of its cancellation, the film had spent about $20 million on pre-production, and was expected to have an overall budget of $170 million.