Peter Jackson's Mortal Engines Movie Gets Bizarre First Trailer

Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit director Peter Jackson is ready to take viewers to a very different world. The first trailer for Mortal Engines, which Jackson is producing, arrived with select screenings of Star Wars: The Last Jedi and it's promising a truly strange adventure.

Adapted from a series of novels by Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines unfolds in a dystopian world where people band together in cities on wheels, both big and small, as they venture across the wasteland of what's left of Earth. In the trailer, one character sees a massive structure speeding her way and asks what it is. "That is London," an outlaw named Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar) tells her.

At that point, the massive machine that serves as London essentially gobbles up the smaller vehicle. It sets the stage for for a battle between cities over the few natural resources remaining on the planet, just to avoid devastation and extinction a little while longer.

Mortal Engines is directed by Christian Rivers, a longtime collaborator of Jackson's that worked on films like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, King Kong, and The Lovely Bones. In addition to Hilmar, the film stars Hugo Weaving, Robert Sheena, and Stephen Lang.

Mortal Engines is still a long way off. It's currently scheduled for release in theaters on December 14, 2018.