Corporate mergers get announced with a lot of positive fanfare, as billionaires bellow about all the “savings” and “jobs” created by two big companies becoming one, while politicians and political representatives heap praise on developments that benefit their large donors. In reality, these mergers largely erase jobs, limit opportunities for consumers, and cause untold chaos on the global economic stage.
The timing of this announcement was important, as Fox, circa. 2016, was more aware than ever that it couldn’t just rely on its ongoing Marvel Comics movies as its sole source of comic book adaptations. The studio needed to embrace further Deadpool and X-Men movies while also making sure it was procuring properties it wasn’t constantly in danger of losing the film rights to. Thus, bringing the Mouse Guard comics to the big screen sounded extra appealing at this moment.
Mouse Guard wasn’t going to be directed by Reeves, but it was viewed as a way to further refine and utilize the motion-capture technology that made those Apes movies Reeves delivered so spectacular. Between Ball and Reeves, Fox was turning to a lot of modern genre movie veterans to get this adaptation off the ground. Additionally, the film represented another stab by 20th Century Fox at solidifying the studio as the place where audiences could expect to see original visual effects-driven movies.
Still, even with all this chaos, Mouse Guard marched on. Once Maze Runner: The Death Cure was released in January 2018, Ball turned his entire sights on this fantasy epic. By the time March 2019 rolled around, Mouse Guard was aiming to start shooting that summer and was assembling a rock-solid cast. Ball recruited Maze Runner veteran Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Andy Serkis, and Idris Elba, among others, to provide motion-capture and vocal performances for various mice in the story.
The legacy of the Mouse Guard movie In the wake of this development, Disney allowed the filmmakers behind Mouse Guard to shop the project at other studios. Reeves and others involved in this proposed blockbuster have various deals all over Hollywood, so there was initially hope that Netflix or Paramount Pictures might pick it up. Tragically, that never happened.