Vincenzo Natali No Longer Directing Neuromancer
It’s a day of mixed news for anyone waiting on the eagerly-anticipated adaptation of William Gibson’s Neuromancer. The good news, the film has just secured new funding; the bad news, it’s just lost its creative team.
Director Vincenzo Natali, the mastermind behind such fare as the Cube and Splice, has left the project – taking with him the Gibson-approved script.
The UK-based GFM films remain on the project only now it is partnered with the Chinese C2M Media Group for co-financing and development. Producer Lucas Foster (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Man on Fire) is currently in talks with unspecified new writers and a new director.
Published in 1984, Gibson’s seminal sci-fi novel gave birth to the Cyberpunk genre. The story involves junkie hacker Case, who, as punishment for some ill-advised thievery, has had his nervous system sabotaged by a mycotoxin that prevents him from "jacking in" to cyberspace.
He's offered a cure by shady ex-military spook Armitage, provided he participates in a none-more-secret mission against the powerful Tessier-Ashpool family and the sinister A.I. Wintermute.
Along the way he encounters post-human icons like the technologically modified assassin Molly and the bodiless consciousness Dixie the Flatline.
Natali first got the project up and running in 2010 which, so far seen The Matrix and Transformers producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura join and then part the project, which, as Natali told Empire in 2013, had a script in place but no funding.
Well today it has funding but no script or director.