Neuromancer
Posted: 11 Aug 2017, 11:30
Yesterday, the latest chapter in the endless saga of various studios and directors trying to get William Gibson's cyberpunk novel to the big screen made headlines, with the suddenly ubiquitous Tim Miller (DEADPOOL, also attached to some sort of TERMINATOR reboot) getting hired to make the film for 20th Century Fox.
This is of course only the latest and most likely not the last try to get this one done. In 2000 music video/commercial director Chris Cunningham was working on it with Gibson but that never went anywhere concrete. Then, between 2011 and 2015, Vincenzo Natali was trying to get the film made, which included some highly questionale casting choices (Mark Wahlberg as Case) but also some very promising interview tidbits and, once he was officially off the project, he shared some production artwork via twitter that make me suspect his version could have worked:
I keep going back and forth on whether I still want a NEUROMANCER movie. On the one hand, sure, I'd love to see it done right, but on the other hand I firmly believe the time to make that film passed sometime in the early or mid 1990ies. The film should be set in an alternate future, one envisioned from the perspective of the 1980ies. Make it a "period piece" or like a movie that sat on a studio shelf since 1992. If it got made now, and if they went the easy route of "updating" the narrative with smartphones, apps and social media, clueless kids would just see it as a ripoff of THE MATRIX or READY PLAYER ONE (though that one will probably hurt Joe Cornish's doomed SNOW CRASH film more than NEUROMANCER), never realizing that it was NEUROMANCER that served as the blueprint for countless films, video games and also the technology of the world we live in today. They just got rid of all the neon and most of the cool stuff!
This is of course only the latest and most likely not the last try to get this one done. In 2000 music video/commercial director Chris Cunningham was working on it with Gibson but that never went anywhere concrete. Then, between 2011 and 2015, Vincenzo Natali was trying to get the film made, which included some highly questionale casting choices (Mark Wahlberg as Case) but also some very promising interview tidbits and, once he was officially off the project, he shared some production artwork via twitter that make me suspect his version could have worked:
I keep going back and forth on whether I still want a NEUROMANCER movie. On the one hand, sure, I'd love to see it done right, but on the other hand I firmly believe the time to make that film passed sometime in the early or mid 1990ies. The film should be set in an alternate future, one envisioned from the perspective of the 1980ies. Make it a "period piece" or like a movie that sat on a studio shelf since 1992. If it got made now, and if they went the easy route of "updating" the narrative with smartphones, apps and social media, clueless kids would just see it as a ripoff of THE MATRIX or READY PLAYER ONE (though that one will probably hurt Joe Cornish's doomed SNOW CRASH film more than NEUROMANCER), never realizing that it was NEUROMANCER that served as the blueprint for countless films, video games and also the technology of the world we live in today. They just got rid of all the neon and most of the cool stuff!