6 replies to this topic

[Nick R]

According to Deadline he is. No info on the budget, but given some of the events and settings in the book, no doubt it'll be quite a jump in scale from Attack the Block! (Which I still haven't seen...)

EXCLUSIVE: Joe Cornish, who has been offered a ton of projects since his alien invasion breakthrough film Attack The Block, has been set to write and direct the Neal Stephenson novel Snow Crash. The book has just been reacquired by Paramount Pictures, with Kathleen Kennedy and Kennedy/Marshall producing.

It’s the second go around on the project for Paramount, which first developed the book back when it was published in 1992. It is a big bestseller and a seminal cyber-punk book that probably was ahead of its time.

...

Paramount dropped the project years ago and it went to Disney with Kennedy/Marshall and languished. Kennedy introduced Cornish to the book, he committed and it is now back at Paramount and is a priority. Cornish is repped by CAA and Independent Talent and the book was repped by CAA for the lit agency Darhansoff & Verrill.

Neal STEPHEN!son!

[mushashi]

Should I be excited? How filmable is this book in the first place, and equally importantly, how much money do they need to throw at this thing to do it justice and will they?

[revlob]

Some of the book takes place in a 90s vision of the future internet, all Lawnmower Man cyber avatars and whatnot. It falls under the same category as Neuromancer, films that probably couldn't be faithful to the book without looking incredibly out-dated.

There are a lot of fascinating ideas in the novel, particularly about memetics and linguistics, which I don't think would survive the translation to film very well. Underage sex too. But it does have pizza-delivering mafia ninjas and supersonic robodogs, so I can see why it sounds like a good idea.

[Comrade]

Snow Crash is such a different prospect than Attack The Block, and so weird and outdated in a lot of ways that it's hard to guess how this will turn out, regardless of how much I love old Cornballs.

[Harsin]

It doesn't matter so much if its outdated as it's essentially a great big piss-take of the cyberpunk genre, looking outdated would only add to the humour.

[merman]

The key will be getting the contrast between the real world (full of franchises and crowded living) and the online world. But any ful adaptation HAS to include the Mafia guys field-testing Reason*








SPOILER if you have not read the book:

Spoiler

Reason is a multi-barrelled minigun (think Blaine in Predator) that fires depleted uranium slugs. In the book it's still in beta testing...

[ryanm]

Everyone listens to reason.