Get your first look at the Duncan Jones 2000AD Rogue Trooper movie

Moon and Warcraft director Duncan Jones is working on a movie adaptation of 2000AD’s Rogue Trooper and we finally have our first glimpse at what it looks like. And, well, it’s... kinda unusual.

Rogue Trooper will be a CG-animated movie, but one where the characters’ faces are hyper detailed, and the performances of the actors were captured using special head-mounted rigs.

The production has released four stills from the film, which really let you get your head around what we’ll end up with.

Our lead still shows the blue-faced lead, played by Aneurin Barnard. The character is not the spitting image of the actor, but thanks to the way the behind-the-scenes tech works, it will feed entirely off the actor's mannerisms.

You can see this slight disconnect of likeness in one of the other stills, which shows the characters of Jemaine Clement and Matt Berry, who play “battlefield looters” Mr Brass and Mr Bland.

The other two released images show why a more CG-led approach will likely work for Rogue Trooper.

These show views of the world(s) in the film, which look grand and, well, entirely otherworldly.

Last year we heard Jones was using video game engine Unreal Engine 5 to power the film’s visuals. And unlike previous engines, this cutting-edge tech doesn’t necessarily need to leave you with a “video gamey” look.

Why use Unreal Engine 5? Money.

“We've done it on an indie budget. We've by necessity had to manage the cash flow because it's us making this, it's not a big studio doing it,” producer Jason Kingsley told IGN in 2024.

Jones already has plenty of experience in this CG-animated area. He directed 2016’s Warcraft: The Beginning. While it wasn’t a box office or critical success (outside of China, at least), it did have a solid sense of place and internal logic, which could easily be lost when playing around in the world of CG.

Rogue Trooper has no firm release date yet, but we’re likely to hear more on July 25th. Duncan Jones will appear at San Diego Comic Con on that date, an ideal time to finally let us know when the film, which finished shooting last year, will be out.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHH! WE’RE ALMOST FINISHED! SEE YOU AT SDCC!” says Jones. And, yes, that is Jones’s official quote on the matter.

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