Director Vincenzo Natali (SPLICE, CUBE) has been attached to helm a big screen version of the William Gibson cyberpunk novel Neuromancer since 2010, but according to the latest update on the project from Screen Daily, he won't be behind the camera for the adaptation.
The site is reporting that producer Lucas Foster (LAW ABIDING CITIZEN, JUMPER) "is currently in talks with new writers and a director" for NEUROMANCER. It's not clear why Natali left the long-in-development film, but it's possible he just got tired of waiting, and he also set to adapt the Stephen King and Joe Hill novella In the Tall Grass, which will start production this September. There is some good news though. GFM Films has partnered with China's C2M Media Group, who will help co-finance and co-produce the movie.
Book synopsis from Amazon:
The Matrix is a world within the world, a global consensus- hallucination, the representation of every byte of data in cyberspace. Case had been the sharpest data-thief in the business, until vengeful former employees crippled his nervous system. But now a new and very mysterious employer recruits him for a last-chance run. The target: an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence orbiting Earth in service of the sinister Tessier-Ashpool business clan. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, mirror-eyed street-samurai, to watch his back, Case embarks on an adventure that ups the ante on an entire genre of fiction.
Who do you want to direct NEUROMANCER, now that Vincenzo Natali has exited the planned film?