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Neuromancer Movie In Your Future?
An anonymous reader pointed out a link talking about how Vincenzo Natali, writer/director of Splice, has written a screenplay for Neuromancer. The article says he even ran it by Gibson. No studio is attached to the project, but at least Natali promised "No Keanu."
...from every year that Slashdot has been in existence.
Having a guitar play Henry would be pretty awesome.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
I have seen some of Vincenzo Natali's previous movies; Cube (very original), Cypher (cool SF thriller) and Nothing (funny and absurd fantasy). He is definitely an interesting director. But I have never heard of Splice. Is it worth tracking down a DVD of Splice?
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. --Niels Bohr
*STHNRABITEL...
* Someone that have not read a book in their entire life.
The first thing I thought was "Damn, someone really resented having a kid."
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
And Johnny Mnemonic really wasn't all that bad.
Doesn't match the source material all that well, but that's hardly Keanu's fault.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Good for you, pal. I've been writing Phillip K. Dick screenplay adaptations for years, and that sonofabitch has YET to approve even ONE of them!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
that Vincenzo Natali is also the writer/director of Cube, an awesome move. Whereas Splice doesn't exactly look like it's going to be winning any awards (according to imdb, Cube won 13).
at least Natali promised 'No Keanu'.
EXCELLENT!!! *Air Guitar plays in the background*
My first thought was "I guess all the good names for phone companies were already taken."
If they switched the second and third letters around their logo could be a rabbit sitting down and reading a newspaper.
For what it's worth, I really liked the first one. It was an amazing story, and Reeves' unique dumber-than-brick acting style really worked, lent the role an intense cluelessness that was perfect. Once Neo knows what he's doing though, the dumber-than-brick style of Reeves' just doesn't work. It just means Neo is a dumb fuck. As such, the second was only watchable for the fight scenes, and the third was just plain terrible. Even the fight scenes weren't that good.
[insert the same tired xkcd joke about there only being one Matrix movie here]
[insert instant +5 Funny here]
Not just mainstreamlined but also compressed into less than two hours. So you get a version which cuts out half the important bits or leaves non-readers with a half baked experience.
I hope for more Science Fiction in series format, though hopefully one with a pre-written story arch and not one which meanders around for half the time like BSG (or, as I have heard, Lost) to make more money at the expense of sense. Digital distribution without the backing of a TV station but instead costing $1 or $2 per episode plus "sponsored by" advertisement might just make it feasible.
Or maybe distribute obligatory reading material (~2-3 pages) before the viewing so you can build a more complex tale on top of that without having the need for characters to repeat (for them) unbelievably obvious facts and still lose half the viewers.
Instead, the role of Case will be played by Ben Affleck. Whoah!
That's what hating on Keanu gets you.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Don't be mean. He's a passable actor as long as you keep him in the correct characters.
I suggest:
- Robot from space.
- Tree.
- Brick.
- Guy in carbonite block (just spray him black)
The problem is, "Neuromancer" was cutting edge in 1984. If they had made it into a movie within 10 years, they might have had a shot at succeeding, but now cyberpunk is mainstream and all the ideas that were new and different in Neuromancer have become cliché thanks to other films and TV shows introducing it in piecemeal fashion.
"Durr" has it right farther down the thread - "Neuromancer: The Movie" will look like it's just following in the footsteps of dated crappy cyberpunkish movies.
The article says he even ran it by Gibson.
It does not, however, say that Gibson approved it.
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
Don't be mean. He's a passable actor as long as you keep him in the correct characters.
I suggest:
- Robot from space.
- Tree.
- Brick.
- Guy in carbonite block (just spray him black)
- Ted "Theodore" Logan
There, fixed that for ya.
According to cannon, Johnny was assassinated before Case came along, so Keanu shouldn't be in it anyway. But that leaves us with an unpalatable Dina Meyer as Molly (or Jane as she was known in the movie). I think I'll lie down now.
Found this using google search: http://www.cinematical.com/2010/05/25/interview-vincenzo-natali-explains-how-to-crack-neuromancer/
Cinematical: What do you think is the key to cracking it for the big screen?
Natali: I think it always comes down to character. I think it's about understanding who Case is and getting his story down. I've read other drafts of the script and they've had good things in them, but they never seem to hold together. And I think part of the problem, and I believe William Gibson would agree with this, but the ending is, shall we say... somewhat ambiguous and not that well defined. In thinking about how I wanted to make the movie version of that book work, I had to start with the end, figure that out first and work backwards from there.
My take on it really is a story of redemption. Case, as a classic noir hero in a sense, is someone who at first appears to be completely in it for himself. He plumbs the depths of the cybernetic underworld and then comes out and reveals that there is more to him than we first thought. It all starts with him.
But I also think you can be quite faithful to the book. I think the movie can and should have a kind of literary structure to it, it shouldn't be a traditional film structure. I think we can have moments where we go into the past and digress. I'm sure one of the issues other writers have faced in writing the adaptation is that there's so much detail that you can get lost in it. I think you have to hone it down a little bit but also allow yourself to flashback to the Screaming Fist or tell Molly's story; just have a chapter in the movie that goes into the past. I think audiences are more than sophisticated enough to handle that.
That actually excites me, I like the idea of having it being a science fiction film but also having more of a highbrow structure to it.
The problem with Neuromancer is that a lot of the scenery and the backdrop itself is based on a pre-Tokyo exchange crash economy, in which everyone just assumed Japan would rule the world soon(ish). The whole feel of the story would be lost, I think now that the parts that could, have already come true, and the parts that haven't come true never will.
Snowcrash has a much better shot, since it pretty much assumed corporations (masquerading around as governments, churches, and media companies) will eventually take over everything. The backdrop still works.
Stephenson's Metaverse is a candied playground populated by everyone, ruled by the technological elite and the corporations who hire them, a safe place to which we see the very first danger unleashed. Gibson's cyberspace is a wild frontier rife with danger, populated exclusively by the technological elite cowboys, who risk life and sanity every day. In the modern real life, Internet access is pervasive and a wide audience will accept "OMG this thing we all do IS dangerous, people could get a computer virus!!!" but you will find a hard sell on "you know that cool web-surfing thing, well these guys nearly die doing it, and that is why they are badass, and Case, well, he almost dies a lot." huh???
Everything ever published has at least one screenplay based on it.
Seriously. If there aren't half a dozen screenplays floating around Hollywood based on the grafitti at Central Station, I'll eat my socks. Its not worth fussing over. The fact the the movie rights to something have been bought is equally unworthy of notice; they regularly buy up rights to things that might possibly one day seem like a good idea, or even just buy up the rights to things that they think would compete against something they have in production, just to keep someone else from using it.
Now when you hear that they've hired some cameramen and actors and are starting production, _then_ you can get excited (or horrified, or whatever your reaction to hearing that one of your favorite tales is about to be Hollywoodized is.)
According to cannon...
Personally, I only trust howitzer for original source material.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Neuromancer is a great book if it's before 1998 and you're in seventh grade.
I wondered if that was just me. I grabbed a copy of Neuromancer about a year ago to see what the fuss was about. Boring characters, almost no plot, and incredibly dated or ludicrous technology. Presumably if you read it in the '80s the technology it described was forward-looking and exciting, but now it doesn't even have that as a redeeming feature.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Woah!
Let's be clear... LUCAS ruined it. He did a great job when he was just ripping off Norse myth (and didn't even bother to change most of the names, Luke, Leia, Anakin, Skywalker, Tatooine... all right out of the original Norse), but when he had to actually make up his own content you got Midi-chlorians ...
Watch Jumpers, Christensen did a very good job in that.
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
I know people love to hate Keanu. But who else could have played Neo? The Matrix was amazing, and he played a big part in that and he can make as many november rains as he wants and i'll still love him.
Also: point break. bill and ted's. my own private idaho.
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The reason JM character was named "Jane" was because they were still shopping Neuromancer and didn't want to block the bigger deal if the buyer wanted an exclusivity contract.
Not because Gibson didn't have the rights.