That damn Joe Cornish sure likes to make me wait. After making an incredible debut with Attack the Block, 2011’s surprise alien invasion hit that first introduced the world to current Star Wars lead John Boyega, Cornish then decided to do… well, nothing. Okay, so helped co-write Steven Spielberg’s Tintin and had a hand in Edgar Wright’s original Ant-Man draft, but he’s not actually directed anything since. Hell, he even turned down Star Trek Beyond.
For a while though, he got us all excited when he boarded a feature film adaptation of Neal Stephenson’s cult classic science fiction novel Snow Crash, but that was 2012 and in seemingly typical Cornish fashion we haven’t heard anything since. But wait! There’s finally been an update, and it’s a positive one!
Collider recently spoke to producer Frank Marshall (Bourne, Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park franchises), who was also supposed to be producing Snow Crash, and he revealed that there has actually been some quiet movement on the film and it could get here sooner than expected. The expectations prior to this being “never”.
“It’s a very, very cool book; and Joe Cornish is developing it with us and I hope we get started on that next year, I’m excited about that one… It’s a complicated story. It takes place in the near future and it has a lot of virtual reality in it, it’s a character that goes back-and-forth between what’s called the ‘metaverse’ in Los Angeles, but the sequences are fantastic and it really gives Joe the opportunity to show that great imagination that he has and create some fantastic scenes. If you look it up you’ll see it’s sort of the bible of the internet universe. Neil wrote this back in the ‘90s and you’ll see it’s a very highly regarded book.”
Next year? Well, damn. At the glacial pace that Cornish projects seem to have, that’s relatively tomorrow! As Marshall hints about the virtual reality angle of this film though, I expect it will need substantial post-production work to bring Stephenson’s insane vision of the future to life. Here’s the book’s official synopsis which should give you a good idea of just how crazy this could get:
In California of the near future, when the U.S. is only a “Burbclave” (city-state), the Mafia is just another franchise chain (CosaNostrastet Pizza, Incorporated) and there are no laws to speak of, Hiro Protagonist – that’s the character’s name – a computer hacker/samurai swordsman/pizza delivery driver, follows clues from the Bible, ancient Sumer and high technology to help thwart an attempt to take control of civilization–such as it is. When he logs on to Metaverse, an imaginary place entered via computer, Hiro encounters Juanita Marquez, a “radical” Catholic and computer whiz. She warns him off Snow Crash (a street drug named for computer failure) and gives him a file labeled Babel (as in Tower of Babel). Another friend, sp ok/pk Da5id, who ignores Juanita’s warning, computer crashes out of Metaverse into the real world, where he physically collapses. Hiro, Juanita, Y.T. (a freewheeling, skateboard-riding courier) and sundry other Burbclave and franchise power figures see some action on the way to finding out who is behind this bizarre “drug” with ancient roots.
Last Updated: July 28, 2016
