First off, I enjoyed Cloud Atlas, wouldnt even have thought of attempting this, if I wasnt a fan.
I’d take an ambitious failure over a film that plays it safe ANY day of the week.
(looking at you Prometheus)
So… after some simple research, I’ve found out how the novel of Cloud Atlas is structured.
Instead of vertical cutting that forcibly makes you draw conclusions between why Story A cuts to Story B, its presented in a fairly chronological order.
Every Story is told up to its climax, then moves on the the next one chronologically.
By the time we get to the last story, it finishes, then we get all of the climaxes of the rest in reverse chronological order, like a mirror:
1-2-3-4-5-6-5-4-3-2-1
Hopefully this gives the viewer characters we care about and see evolve throughout each of the stories, rather then every 5 minutes playing ‘Guess Who’ on screen.
This sounds ambitious, (though not NEARLY as ambitious as the theatrical cut was IMO), but im giving it a shot.