Idris Elba is in final negotiations to star in Mouse Guard, Fox’s adaptation of the Boom! Studios comic being directed by Wes Ball, the filmmaker behind the Maze Runner movies.


Andy Serkis and Thomas Brodie-Sangster are already on the roll call for the project, which is described as a sort of Game of Thrones with mice and which will be shot using motion capture and have WETA providing visual effects.


Based on the comics and graphic novel by David Petersen, Mouse Guard is a set in a medieval world and tells of an order of mice who are the sworn protectors of their realm. Enemies range from predators such as foxes and eagles to other rodents. The series from Archaia/Boom! is a two-time Eisner Award winner.


Elba will play Celanawe, an Obi-Wan Kenobi-like figure who was once a legendary champion and now thought long gone.


Serkis is the villain of the piece, the Guard’s blacksmith known as Midnight who turns against it. Brodie-Sangster is Lieam, one of the Guard’s newest and youngest members who will be called upon to prove his bravery.


Matt Reeves is producing along with Boom!’s Ross Richie and Stephen Christy as well as Joe Hartwick Jr.


A May start of production is being planned.Idris has turned into one of the town’s most in-demand actors, wrapping up a deal to star in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad for Warner Bros. He plays a villain in Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, which is slated to bow Aug. 2, and is coming off of filming Working Title and Universal’s adaptation of the Broadway mainstay Cats, in which he plays the feline Macavity.