Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, James McAvoy, Ian McKellen, and Natalie Portman have been offered roles in Tom Tykwer’s adaptation of David Mitchell’s novel Cloud Atlas. The book spans thousands of years, several genres, and has six leading characters. In their article, The Playlist notes that the material appears to be un-filmable. But that hasn’t stopped Tykwer before. He managed to tackle Perfume: The Story of a Murderer when author Patrick Süskind thought that only Stanley Kubrick or Milos Forman would have the skill to do it. Production Weekly notes that production is gearing up for a spring 2011 start, so the cast has plenty of lead time to put this in their schedule should they decide to sign on.

Twyker is also writing the adaptation and the Wachowski Siblings are producing. Hit the jump for a synopsis of the novel.

Here’s the product description for David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas [via Amazon]:

A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan’s California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified “dinery server” on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation — the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other’s echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small.

In his captivating third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity’s dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us.

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