Admittedly, it’s just one website and an anonymous source, but a Neuromancer movie? Hasn’t that boat sort of sailed? Gibson’s novel is still important for the quality of its writing and the depth of its characters — neither of which, I imagine, is exactly what would draw big-budget Hollywood to the project — but its vision of “cyberspace” is a little out-dated. It’s difficult to see how they would get around that — and thus provide the special effects I’m sure Hollywood is interested in — without seriously messing with the story.
Not that that’s ever stopped anyone before. I’m just saying, how do you film Neuromancer without its cyberspace looking like something out of the ’80s?
Man, it’s true. I only read that book for the first time a few years back, and, as stupid and irrational as I know it is, I simply could not stop myself from constantly thinking how cliched it was.
You use the title for brand recognition, gut the story, and film something entirely different. Duh. See also: I, Robot.
Betty: In all fairness to Gibson, it’s only become clichéd after some twenty years of bad Neuromancer knockoffs. I think it’s still a good book — if nothing else, “The sky was the color of television tuned to a dead channel” is a great opening line — but also a good example of how science fiction really isn’t a predictive genre.
Thud: Obviously that’s what they can, and probably will, do. I guess I just wish they wouldn’t. It’s not like freely adapting Gibson’s writing has worked in the past. Johnny Mnemonic, anyone?
Well, yeah, I know. That’s why it’s stupid and irrational. But it does tend to happen to works like that that spawn their own imitative subgenre. (See also Tolkien, although I think Lord of the Rings actually holds up better under the weight of its knockoffs than Neuromancer does.)
And Thud has the right of it, of course. Sigh.
They originally had Leonardo Decrapio as “Case”. Now it’s Hayden Christensen.
I wonder if this movie could be even worse than Johnny Mnemonic.
I wonder who will play “Molly Millions”