Hot off the presses from Deadline, well, maybe lukewarm, but Joe Cornish (Attack The Block) has now selected his next piece of material to adapt and spin into his second feature film, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.
Recently the property was reacquired (if anyone can get something back they want, it’s power-producer Kathleen Kennedy) by Paramount Pictures for Kennedy and long-time producer partner (and husband) Frank Marshall.
Sidenote for your education, they are, maybe, THE power-couple of Hollywood. With longstanding ties to Spielberg, between the two of them, they’ve (most times together) produced nearly every film he’s made. Kennedy even recently nabbing herself Co-Chairman of Lucasfilm. Lucas himself will be remaining CEO, but Kennedy will be in charge of running daily operations. If these two back your film as the producers, you’ve got something really good in your lap (insert erection joke here).
This novel has been heralded by Time magazine as one the all-time best English language novels. Period. Woe.
It’s supposedly a cyber-punk, but I’ve heard some arguments on that, so you be the judge. A synopsis of Snow Crash is as follows via Amazon:
“From the opening line of his breakthrough cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson plunges the reader into a not-too-distant future. It is a world where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the United States exists as a patchwork of corporate-franchise city-states, and the Internet–incarnate as the Metaverse–looks something like last year’s hype would lead you to believe it should. Enter Hiro Protagonist–hacker, samurai swordsman, and pizza-delivery driver. When his best friend fries his brain on a new designer drug called Snow Crash and his beautiful, brainy ex-girlfriend asks for his help, what’s a guy with a name like that to do? He rushes to the rescue. A breakneck-paced 21st-century novel, Snow Crash interweaves everything from Sumerian myth to visions of a postmodern civilization on the brink of collapse. Faster than the speed of television and a whole lot more fun, Snow Crash is the portrayal of a future that is bizarre enough to be plausible.”
Sounds like Cornish’s territory. Seeing Attack The Block for the first time I went in knowing nothing more than gorilla/aliens with blue glowing eyes, uh, well, attack a block and gang of hoods in South London on one of the dodgier estates in the area. And what I saw was a wonderfully vibrant, hilarious and intense movie that was worth every single second of my time.
And for those of you also saw it and thought, “Hey this is kinda like an Edgar Wright comedy. . .” It’s because he exec- produced it. 1 out of 10 of them, but still. They even filmed in the very same area of London where Michael Caine’s Harry Brown takes place, and Wright’s own Shaun of The Dead and Hot Fuzz.
No word on casting or a start date, but Cornish will likely be starting on the script as the movie is a “priority” for Paramount..
