Neuromancer Movie Gets Distributor, Shoot Date, Locations

Bless me Shepherd, for I have sinned: have always preferred Neal Stephenson to William Gibson. Nevertheless, I understand that the significance of a Neuromancer movie is non-trivial, and would totally get excited about waiting for one and go see it when it comes out.

Especially if it’s directed by the guy behind Splice and Cube.

Yes, Vincenzo Natali, maker of utterly weird and perturbingly psychological science fiction flicks is down for the movie adaptation of Neuromancer, which has “been planned for a while” since at least 2009. Most recently, Seven Arts Pictures and GFM Films announced that the movie has secured distributors at this year’s Cannes festival and preproduction has begun. Actual filming will start sometime next year, in Canada, Istanbul, Tokyo and London.

And, judging by an interview with /Film last year, Natali knows what he’s doing: bringing a cyberpunk story to a mainstream audience that is ironically may find its tropes and attributes too familiar already… after watching them in all the other films that it inspired.

I think in terms of how you approach Neuromancer now, post-Matrix, post-all the other films that have poached from it, in the 21st century (because the book was written in 1984), I think you have to take those things and use them to your advantage, because what they give you, what The Matrix, for instance, gives you is the opportunity to make Neuromancer in a culture that is already aware of what The Matrix is. I mean, the very word “matrix” is in Neuromancer. It was borrowed by the Wachowski brothers for their film. I think that’s a good thing, because I don’t even know how someone would have been able to make that film 10 years ago or 15 years ago, because it’s so abstract. I don’t even know how people understood the book when it first came out. I think I read it in the late 1980s, but in 1984, how would people even understand it, because it was just so far ahead of the curve?

Yeah, I can’t wait until somebody says, within ear shot of me, that the movie is just ripping off The Matrix. William Gibson himself warns us to calm down, though, in typical style:

Quit fretting about Neuromancer, for Pete’s sake! We’ve got the Rapture looming!

(via the LA Times.)