Andy and Lana Wachowski (‘The Matrix’) and Tom Tykwer (‘Run, Lola, Run’) are co-writing and co-directing an ambitious adaptation of author David Mitchell’s metaphorically ambitious novel, ‘Cloud Atlas’.

Directed by the trio, as two separate teams, the science fiction epic stars Halle Berry (X-Men’), Tom Hanks (‘Road To Perdition’), Hugo Weaving (‘The Matrix’), Susan Sarandon (‘Speed Racer’), Ben Whishaw (‘The Tempest’) and Jim Broadbent (‘Harry Potter’ films). Mitchell’s epic novel follows six stories with each set in a different time from a Pacific island in 1850s to 1975 California to a post-apocalyptic Hawaii. Each of the stars will be filmed playing numerous rolls within the different story lines.

Like Alan Moore’s ‘Watchmen’, ‘Cloud Atlas’ has been called unfilmable because of the usually linear nature of movies and being able to tie together six individual stories that move around in time. But financier Stefan Ardnt, whose X Filme is footing the bill for the film, has told the Hollywood Reporter “many have called the novel unfilmable, but Tom [Tykwer] and the Wachowskis have found a way to tell these stories in an amazing, linear and very cinematic way.”

Currently X Filme is tying up loose ends with the financing and negotiations with the stars contracts. Production is scheduled to begin in Bablesberg, Germany in September 2011 with a possible 2012 release date.