Empire Magazine has in its February issue the first look of Alex in Mute, a film by Duncan Jones starring Alexander Skarsgård, Paul Rudd, Justin Theroux and more. Alex plays Leo Bailer, a mute bartender that goes up against his city’s gangsters in an effort to find out what happened to his missing partner.

Check the full scan in our gallery, and the transcripted interview below:

Five fast facts about new Berlin-set sci-fi Mute from star Alexander Skarsgård

1. Skarsgård’s character has been mute since childhood
“Leo [Beiler] was in a boating accident, and his vocal cords were severed when he was nine. He could have had an operation to save his voice, but his Amish mom basically said, ‘God will heal Leo.’ For his entire adolescence, he was waiting for God to heal him. He didn’t learn sign language because, well, why would he? He was like, ‘God will heal me any day now.’ He has a sense of abandonment, trying to find his place in the world.”

2. Leo is a fish-out-of-water
“Leo left the Amish community when he was in his early 20s bringing only one suitcase and one suit with him [to Berlin]. He doesn’t have any
contact with his mom anymore. She kind of disowned him. But, in an odd way, he’s still holding on to the Amish culture he grew up in. He’s in Berlin, thirty
years from now, living between a nightclub and a brothel.”

3. Germany is no longer in the EU
“The euro is gone, and they’re back to the Deutschmark. They have celebrities on their money, like Claudia Schiffer and David Hasselhoff. Duncan [Jones, director] has taken the whole notion of celebrity culture and mixed it in with the idea of a society run by corporations. Which, in effect, we have now in the United States.”

4. The future will be run by big business
“In the movie’s future, we have militarised corporations that you have to subscribe to. They provide everything, from food to housing and everything in between. For example, one is called Volkea – a hybrid of Volvo and IKEA. They have militarised units out on the streets – sales reps for their corporation, scanning people to see if they’re subscribers or not. They’re way more powerful than the government. It’s not that far-fetched, unfortunately. I mean, it’s incredibly scary, but I really think we’re headed towards a plutocracy.”

5. It’s a detective story – without a detective
“Leo’s not a professional detective. He’s just trying to find his girlfriend, Naadirah [played by Seyneb Saleh]. The last time he saw her, she was very emotional, talking about leaving Berlin. He thought she was breaking up with him – but the next morning she was gone. Did she just take off? Did she dump him – or did something happen to her?”

Mute is on Netflix in 2018.