Neuromancer Movie Deal Moving Forward

chill writes "After years in development, a film adaptation of William Gibson's seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer is finally moving forward. According to a press release, the film has secured sales from distributors at Cannes and visual effects work has already begun. Filming will begin in 2012 with locations in Canada, Istanbul, Tokyo, and London."

Comments

Please

[Lifyre]

Just Please don't suck... The books are great and there is a story begging to be made into a movie in them but it would be so easy to screw up...

Re:Please

[houghi]

If there are some people who do not like it, that would be normal. But if you take something like 'I am Legend' which was a great story, then alter the story so the the main character looks good, then you have a problem.

LotR? Good, because it mostly stuck to the book. Starship Troopers? Bad.

I can understand if a movie maker does not like the story. But then PLEAAAASE don't buy the rights just for the title. Make your own story that you DO like and let somebody else, who does a better job, turn the book into a movie.

Re:Please

[overlordofmu]

My vote would have been David Fincher to direct.

Also, Gibson's short story from the collection 'Burning Chrome', titled 'New Rose Hotel', was made in into a wonderful film by the same title directed by my all time favorite director, Abel Ferrara. Chris Walken, Willem Dafoe and Asia Argento star.

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133122/

Interestingly, Ferrara turns an 11 page story (or is it 17 pages - it is prime anyway) with no dialog (not a single quotation mark in the 11 pages) into a film that is solely driven by dialog. Almost no special effects at all. It is simply actors acting and it is beautifully done.

*** WARNING: Ferrara is arty and this film will not please the popcorn crowd. ***

Re:Please

[Steauengeglase]

As much as I'd (in theory) really like to see this movie, I can't imagine not being completely let down by it, even it is being done by the same guy who did the wonderfully craptastic Cube (not knocking it, it was just kinda low budget). I can't imagine a modern audience doing anything but laughing at all the neon, Jamaican piloted space ships and a 3D internet. You'd probably have to remove those entirely and then what do you have?

On the plus side, Gibson has always said to take the idea of there being a Neuromancer movie with a grain of salt. The last time this movie was in "pre-production" it was being directed by some guy whose only experience was directing Britney Spear videos. I won't believe this one until I have a ticket in my hand. So yeah, I'll watch it, if it is finished, but I can't say I'd expect much.

Re:Please

[sconeu]

Whoa....

Re:Please

[mal3]

Whether you want to see all of the political information on screen or not is one thing, but Starship Troopers turned the political segments into a straight parody of Heinlein's views. You shouldn't piss on the author while making his book into a movie.

As far as his views in ST being fascist, I disagree. They're not mainstream, but not totalitarian either. There was a democracy, you just had to earn the right to participate through community service. I'm not 100% sold on the idea, but it has some merit.

The Future of the Past

[timeOday]

This book is from 1984. How can the movie have any fresh ideas? I'm having visions of "lawnmower man."

Re:The Future of the Past

[halowolf]

Yes I made the same mistake with Snow Crash. Read it years after it came out and it just didn't age well at all. If you want to read a good book that focus's on language having power read Spellwright http://www.amazon.com/Spellwright-Blake-Charlton/dp/0765317273

Re:The Future of the Past

[Opportunist]

The book was decades ahead of its time, it's more topical than ever. Gibson is a miracle, imo, not only because he pretty accurately predicted a future where corporations rule the world and information and information exchange has become omnipresent (ok, he overdid both a bit, but what SciFi author doesn't?), he did so without any idea of how a computer works (IIRC he said in an interview that 'til he got one, which was long after '84, he thought there's some kinda crystals spinning inside or something like that).

Gibson's Neuromancer world is a bit more advanced than ours, in good and in bad, extrapolate our reality, add a bit of pessimism and you'll get there. More corporation control, more religious lunacy, bigger separation between wealthy and poor, more integration of technology into human bodies. Some parts of it are reality already or are "around the corner". A bit more dystopian, a bit more seedy, a bit more corporation controlled, but essentially... I think the mood is quite well captured. It's a gloomy near-future setting, which will probably be near-future for the forseeable future, as it was 25 years ago.

Re:The Future of the Past

[IICV]

I read it a few years ago. Apart from being quite badly written, it was painfully dated and showed a distressing lack of understanding of basic computing concepts on the part of the author. I can imagine that someone who read it in the '80s would find it exciting and groundbreaking, but it just hasn't stood the test of time.

Yup. William Gibson wrote Neuromancer on a typewriter. He had never even touched a computer at the time.

If you're expecting anything even remotely resembling actual computery stuff, prepare for disappointment; nobody's going to be nmapping a target and then running sshnuke.

I would disagree that it's badly written; it's not. It's just not written clearly; it's somewhat experimental, so it often makes very little analytical sense. The idea was to convey the overwhelming feeling of constant future-shock, where as soon as you think you have a grip on some new technology a radically newer one comes out. It's kinda confusing if you try to force sense onto things; you're supposed to just absorb it and ride the wave, like the protagonist talks about early in the book IIRC.

On the other hand, it is a pretty cool story. I mean, Molly the cybernetic assassin has razor blade fingers and shades built in to her eye sockets (her tear ducts were re-routed to the roof of her mouth, so she spits instead of crying).

Basically, it's enjoyable as long as you follow the MST3K mantra. If you expect anything that even remotely resembles the realities of computing, you'll be disappointed; it's as factual The Hobbit, except set against a postmodern cybernetic background.

(It's actually kinda weird - geeks seem to have this strange idea that all science fiction should be extrapolation based on current trends, and there's no room at all for pure fantasy with a sciencey coating)

Re:The Future of the Past

[Gilmoure]

If it wasn't generated by 20 somethings during the last decade, IT'S CRAP!

The MTV generation just won't tolerate lame old fogey stuff.

It's going to be tough.

[Psyko]

This would have been easier to put together 20 years ago, I think they tried to do a movie a couple of times already but it fell apart.

Nowadays, this is going trying to take the 'futuristic' concepts of global spanning data networks and present them to people that pretty much grew up with them in place, minus the neural interfaces... It was a great book, and I remember in the late 80's was excited to see they were working on a movie. Now, well, I don't think they're going to be able to pull it off.

Next up, Snow Crash? Why not, these things are going to have to be changed so much to make sense in today's terms of technology that they're not really going to be able to resemble the original except in a vague sort of way.

Re:It's going to be tough.

[Opportunist]

I don't think it would be too hard for younger people to grow into the setting. For us, the big deal was that information exchange and the "universal telepresence" that was flashy and cool. For them, this part will probably be trivial. But there are other things in the book that might be quite interesting to a younger audience that grew up with the omnipresent internet and the ability to access information and reach whoever you want at will and leisure at any moment of your life. Who knows, for them it may well be far less intimidating than it was for us (for me at least Neuromancer was a dystopian book, for them it could well be utopian, who knows?).

Remember, the new American dream is to be famous and get rich that way, not to work hard for it. Neuromancer is, amongst other things, a showpiece of this behaviour. They might identify with a different character than we did.

Personally, I think discussing this movie with a younger viewer should provide very interesting insight. They will certainly have a very different viewpoint.

Re:It's going to be tough.

[Just Some Guy]

Neuromancer was never about technology; it was about the effects technology has on society. It could be set in the Wild West without changing the underlying themes of disenfranchisement and alienation.

Not an Easy Book to Read

[ideonexus]

Neuromancer is not an easy read. The text is very dense. I reread it last year and, even at my education level, found I had to go back and reread many passages when I realized I had missed important bits of action (the death of an important character happens so quickly and non descriptively you have to read the passage several times to make sure it actually happened).

That being said, this book will translate magnificently to the big screen. As old as it is, it hasn't lost its futuristic feel and foresight; although, wherever megabytes of data are mentioned, they'll have to upgrade them to tera- or pentabytes. I am very much looking forward to this film, but it is still in the early stages and I've seen many promising projects like this die at later stages when the producers look at what's going on and don't get it.

Worried.

[technoid_]

Due to how badly Gibson's big screen adaptation of Johnny Mnemonic butchered the original story, I am worried this too will tarnish my memories of William Gibson's works. Some stories are better off not being made into movies at all versus being made into a bad movie.

While we are at it, lets ruin a few other cyberpunk classics such as Snowcrash by Stephenson and Software/Wetware from Rudy Rucker.

BTW: Get off my lawn.

technoid_

Re:Worried.

[Anonymous Coward]

Diamond Age ONLY if Terry Gilliam were to direct it.

Re:Worried.

[theArtificial]

Due to how badly Gibson's big screen adaptation of Johnny Mnemonic butchered the original story,

IIRC part of which was due to Gibson wanting to retain rights to specific characters (Molly for starters).

IMDB scores for Neuromancer Director

[dryriver]

The highest score director Vincenzo Natali has on IMDB is 7.5/10 for the 1997 Scifi film "Cube". He has completed 11 projects as director and has never reached a 8/10 on any of them. Average scores by project type are listed here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0622112/filmorate Average scores (IMDB) by type of involvement in projects: --- Art Department 7.24 -- Director 6.59 -- Writer 6.84 -- Thanks 6.77 -- Actor 8.10 -- Miscellaneous Crew 6.50 -- Producer 6.40 -- Unless the strength and originality of Neuromancer's story/characters/universe/plot devices inspires him to "reach new heights", this is going to be a probable 7/10 movie (not bad, but not great either). They could have given Neuromancer to a heavyweight like Fincher, Scott, Spielberg or someone like Mathieu Cassovitz (of "La Heine" fame) and it would probably have turned out tremendous. Alfonso Cuarón who did a tremendous job on "Children of Men" comes to mind as well. I hope they don't f%ck this up. Neuromancer is brilliant material. Definitely in the Top 5 best realistic Scifi books category if you ask me.

make a 2x2x2 cube

[circletimessquare]

the measurements for each dimension are:

x: popular with general audiences, unpopular with general audiences

y: financially successful, financial failure

z: popular with subculture fanatics, unpopular with subculture fanatics

ok, now amongst those 8 spaces, place your bets:

like lord of the rings? (winner on all 3 dimensions)

like watchmen? (winner in both popularities, loser financially)

like solaris? (only a winner with the subculture of diehards)

like tron? (winner in general popularity, failure in subculture popularity, winner financially)

etc., etc.

8 possible outcomes

NO!

[Thud457]

:-(

Wait until the Hollywood suits get ahold of it

[circletimessquare]

"We have introduced the idea to demographic panels assembled from shoppers at Mall of America, and feedback is generally ambivalent, with many blank stares. However, we have found that this movie will do better in the 18-34 female demographic if 'Neuromancer' is retitled 'New Romancer.' Also, there should be more bodily humor and scatological jokes. 'Too weird', 'I don't get it', 'Something your weird brother would watch', and a doodle of a cat is the dominant impression of the movie from the questionnaire forms. We also suggest cutting the running length from 2 hours, 30 minutes to 45 minutes. This can be accomplished with little damage to the source material and remaining true to the author's original intent, by removing only the plot and the coherency. Plot and coherency seemed to matter the least to the demographic in our surveys."

Re:Half and half

[Thud457]

Half of me is excited for the white-knuckle thrill ride and half of me dreads what crap they will spew forth.

sounds like free taco nite at the local bar...

Re:I just have one question...

[dryriver]

Yes. He will play 'Cyberspace' by wearing a bodysuit covered in blinking LED lights, neon glowstrips and such on a darkened set.

Re:Hmm...I don't know...

[greymond]

Neuromancer is the name of one of the AI's in the book...Wintermute is the other one...they merge at the end of the book into "sum of the whole" or something like that they it refers to itself as.

Re:YES!

[spongman]

YES!! Hopefully it'll be as good as Johnny Mnemonic!

I could tell Gibson never touched a computer

[JameskPratt]

I read the book as a teenage and young adult. I noticed reading it that Gibson must have no experience with computers. I also found that part where written that well. I think its loved because ppl wanted to be hip about computers in the 80s and it been riding on that ever since.

I'm with you, bro!

[Thud457]

I keep telling them I don't want these flames coming out of my faucet!

already done...plus there are better novels to do

[optimism]

Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" nailed the dark & gritty future back in 1982, a couple years before Neuromancer was published.

Wachowski brothers' "Matrix" nailed virtual reality in 1999.

Dozens of other decent movies have riffed on these and related themes in the last 20 years. "Gamer" in 2009, "eXistenZ" in 1999, and "Magnetic Rose" in Katsuhiro Ohtomo's "Memories" (1995) come to mind.

(Oh and let's not forget the "Wild Palms" miniseries back in 1993 that was directly influenced by Gibson's work. Or maybe we SHOULD forget it. ;)

I'd love to see some of the works by Brin, Banks, Reynolds, and Vinge translated to film. However, "Dune" taught us that a richly imaginative scifi novel cannot be translated to a theater-length film (1984), and that it was not cheap enough to produce a decent quality series (2000).

I look forward to the time, perhaps 10 years from now, when one of these authors' works can be made as a high-quality 20+ hour series.

Re:Neuromance not really about the 'net

[mekkab]

indeed, it's a story about self-actualization. The uniting of the two different AI halves is very zen.