While IMDB is hardly the pinnacle of being a rock solid source of news, it is suggesting that Australian actress Sophie Cox is playing Clytie Potts in the Mortal Engines movie.

The character of Clytie is a Historian on board the city of London.

Tom Natsworthy and Herbert Melliphant have a childish fight in front of her during London's successful capture of a smaller city.

It's a small role however a key one as spoiler alert:

Clytie survives the Medusa explosion and plays a larger role in the fourth novel of the Predator Cities series, A Darkling Plain.

Follow Sophie on Twitter.

It's been pretty much an open secret around town in Wellington but Steven Lang has been publicly confirmed as playing Shrike.

Lang is arguably most well known for playing Colonel Miles Quaritch in Avatar but his recent turn as Waldo in The Bad Lands has been pretty well received.

Here's Lang's announcement of his role via Twitter:

I'm a wrap on a very cool role in a very cool flick #MortalEngines #Shrike pic.twitter.com/t5gWgCoE6H

— Stephen Lang (@IAmStephenLang) June 27, 2017

Given that Avatar was filmed in NZ in under Jim Cameron's eye in Peter Jackson's playground of Miramar, Lang would have been well acquainted with Jackson and company so when looking for someone who could convincingly play the 'bad guy' role of Shrike, they would have known Lang to be a good fit.

We were quite pleased when earlier this month Mortal Engines author Philip Reeve confirmed that the character was called Shrike and not Grike as is used in the American publications of the Predator Cities Quartet.

Update: Shrike has not appeared in either the teaser or the trailer. Christian Reeves and the marketing team are clearly holding the character back for quite a big reveal.

Here's an amusing look at one Wellingtonian's description of how his audition was for the Mortal Engines movie as an extra.

Update:

We called it! Jihae sings a Vera Lynn song in the trailer!

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I had an idle thought while listening to some Jihae (as you do when you know she's playing Anna Fang in Mortal Engines) that she should probably do a theme song for Mortal Engines as most Peter Jackson productions seem to tack on a song in the credits - one or two may have even won Oscars!

So I posted this thought on twitter:


Notice anything?

That's right Jihae herself liked it. Well, if she's managing the account herself she did.

Either way, is this a subtle confirmation that yes, Jihae is involved in some capacity on the soundtrack?

It really should be a no brainer - Anna Fang is going to be a HUGELY POPULAR character as along with Hester, she's a bit of a book readers fan favorite, so why not have the actress who is already an accomplished singer, belt out a tune?

And this gets us wondering - who is composing the music for the movie? An old favourite of Peter's or someone new?

So who do I collect on my bet with?

Here's stalker Anna Fang singer Jihae offering her version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah:



Imagine Anna Fang merrily singing that as she as she flies the Jenny Hanniver!

Even though this next video is an add for some beauty product, it gives you a real idea into what makes Jihae tick, and I can sure see why she was cast as the tough Anna Fang for Mortal Engines.

The hunt is still on for extras to be in Mortal Engines.

Straight from the Trade Me website, here's your chance to be famous .....

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FILM EXTRAS REQUIRED

OFFICIAL, EXTRAS CASTING -
MORTAL ENGINES

MORTAL ENGINES - EXTRAS CASTING DEPARTMENT is looking for:

A large number of background Extras for filming June - July this year in MIRAMAR, WELLINGTON

PLEASE ONLY APPLY TO BE PART OF THIS PROJECT IF:

1. YOU HAVE FLEXIBLE AVAILABILITY
YOUR OWN TRANSPORT

2. MUST CURRENTLY LIVE IN WELLINGTON

3. ARE A NZ RESIDENT OR HOLD A CURRENT WORK PERMIT

4. YOU ARE 17 YEARS OR OLDER


Successful applicants may be required for anything from 1- 12 days over the next two months.
The working day is 12 hours and may include overtime.
The day rate before overtime is $200

PLEASE SEND AN APPLICATION REQUEST TO :

extras.squeakywheels@gmail.com

This Extras Casting Call is open to anyone who falls within the application requirements above.

*Please note that this is an application process and not an offer of work.

Applicants for this position should have NZ residency or a valid NZ work visa.

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Check out this amazing book-accurate Hester Shaw cosplay

Using incredible, movie-quality prosthetics, a truly horrific and fiercely accurate version of Philip Reeve's original vision for Hester Shaw has been stunningly brought to life in the real world.

What immense dedication and dark imagination shown by the talented make-up artist, Anna Langham. This is exactly the level of visceral storytelling that drew readers to the Traction Era in the first place.

Back before the film was released, one often wondered if director Christian Rivers was prepared to be as boldly unglamorous as this effort with his massive Hollywood movie production. We all strongly suspected the on-screen Hester's scarring would be heavily toned down from this amazing, terrifying look to appease mainstream audiences. And sadly, as history shows, we were entirely correct.

To understand just how perfectly Anna nailed the aesthetic, here is the exact, brutal description of Hester's destroyed face directly from the first pages of the original novel:

"A terrible scar ran down her face from forehead to jaw, making it look like a portrait that had been furiously crossed out. Her mouth was wrenched sideways in a permanent sneer, her nose was a smashed stump and her single eye stared at him out of the wreckage, as grey and chill as a winter sea."

Not a bad effort re-creating that absolute wreckage, eh? It perfectly captures the "portrait furiously crossed out" vibe that Tom Natsworthy so vividly describes when her red scarf first slips down in the Gut of London.

The make-up designer Anna Langham, who miraculously achieved this transformative work, wrote of her intense design process on Instagram:

"This entire look was sculpted by myself and covers from forehead to chin, eyebrows are pieces weaved and stuck with Snappy G glue. The scar runs from forehead to jaw and therefore the nose, left eye and mouth had to be meticulously recreated. I absolutely LOVED Prosthetics at @bathacademyofmediamakeup and it is something I wish to continue working in for a very long time.

I painted the piece using light washes of silicone paint and illustrator palettes and worked incredibly hard to create a realistic and natural skin texture and colour which would seamlessly match Tegan's neck and normal skin tone."

Note the spot-on lore detail of Hester's iconic red scarf being included to frame the prosthetic.

Anna also passionately noted the deeply personal inspiration behind her grueling two-and-a-half-week build:

"My full face Prosthetic brilliantly modelled by the wonderful Tegan. I worked for 2.5 weeks on this piece alone. It is heavily inspired by my absolute favourite book character #hestershaw from #mortalengines. I have been intensely dreaming to design and create a look for her ever since the age of 7, and this is finally my hand-crafted Hester scar."

We highly suspect Anna has a very fine, long career as a special effects make-up artist ahead of her! Mr. Reeve would undoubtedly be very happy with this brutally honest version of Hester for sure! It captures the exact 'Captain Ahab' energy he intended when he first put pen to paper.

Hungry for more Traction Era creativity? Here are some more incredible Hester Shaw costume pictures created by the dedicated fandom.

You may have read an article we wrote a few weeks ago that considered the name of Shrike from Mortal Engines and why it was changed to Grike for the American publications of the Predator Cities Quartet.

We also pondered if the movie production would go with Grike or Shrike.

Well wonder no longer! The author of Mortal Engines Mr Philip Reeve recently came to NZ to have a look at the filming of the movie (and do a cameo part!) and he got to have a play on set and today he posted this on his Twitter account:


It appears to be the box which Shrike's head is kept in! Which also means Shrike is named Shrike and not Grike! Not word yet on who is playing the green eyed killer!

It also means American readers may get horribly confused when they first see the movie as they are quite likely to believe the abomination that Kit Solent became is called Grike with a solid G!

Kiwi actor living across the ditch in Sydney as announced he's been cast in Mortal Engines:


Hama hasn't given too many details other than he's been booked for three weeks work and this will be his first trip home in 17 years! Hama is a graduate of the Wellington based acting school, Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School so in a sense, he's finally come full circle to film in Wellington.

His IMDB page shows he's had limited screen time but a notable gig on The Navigator.

Congratulations Frederick, sit back and have a well deserved home brew.

The time frame in which Mortal Engines covers is known as the Traction Era.

Time was measured in years since the first traction cities got rolling.

So time is measured in Traction Era (TE) years.

To my reading, this is not exactly explicitly referenced in the Mortal Engines series itself.  

For some context, municipal darwinism began at the same time the Traction Era began and we know that at page 9 of ME that this form of Darwinism has existed for a 1000 years.

But we must of course consider the timings around what caused the Traction Era to begin.

Mortal Engines is set in a post-apocalyptic world, ravaged by the so called "Sixty Minute War", which caused massive geological upheaval and the destruction of humanity. The war resulted in the subsequent struggle of restoring civilization and technology and reclaiming that element of lost humanity.

We know that the whale that hangs in Tom's Museum on London City was extinct for thousands of years. We only assume this happened before the Sixty Minute War began.

Phillip Reeve’s ‘The Traction Codex’ gives us some insight into the time line.

“After the Ancients destroyed themselves in the Sixty Minute War, there were several thousand years in which nothing much happened. These were the Black Centuries. The great civilizations of the Screen Age had been utterly swept away, and humanity was reduced to a few scattered bands of savages’