What’s the key to making the Neuromancer movie a reality? According to the book-to-film adaptation’s latest director, Vincenzo Natali, it’s all about timing and now, the timing is right to bring William Gibson’s 1984 cyberpunk novel to life. The story focuses on a guy named Case, a computer hacker whose central nervous system is damaged as a form of retribution. In order to regain his abilities, he must abide by a mysterious backer’s request to assist him in a mission involving a seriously advanced Artificial Intelligence. While this type of AI might still be far from a reality, such an advanced technology is far more digestible today than even just three years ago.
Just the other day, news of Natali’s hiring was discovered buried in a THR article about Jason Priestley’s new directorial gig, Mud Puppy. It’s surprising the news didn’t earn its own write-up considering the never ending effort to get the project up and running and the fact that Natali is about to take a step into the spotlight when his film Splice hits theaters on June 4th.
Chris Cunningham made one of the earliest attempts at turning Neuromancer into a feature film and then the gig fell into the hands of Joseph Kahn who reportedly locked Hayden Christensen to star. Clearly that never happened and now here we are with Natali.
After providing some details on Splice, Natali enlightened me on his seemingly hefty schedule and how working on one project can indirectly help another. Then he moved onto Neuromancer in particular, which he describes as, “one of the greatest most influential science fiction novels of the last 20 years.” But even fantastic source material can’t guarantee a film’s success and that’s as evident as ever in Neuromancer’s case. So why is Natali the guy for the job? “The time is right.”
Check out his full reasoning in the video below.
