In the beginning there was Bladerunner, and Bladerunner was good.
The iconic cityscape from Blade Runner. © the Blade Runner Partnership. All Rights Reserved.
Ridley Scott's brilliant 1982 film (based on the Phillip K. Dick short story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) gave the world an intriguing (although dystopian) view of Los Angeles in the year 2019 (only four years away from today). With it's sprawling cities and technology-saturated society, Bladerunner literally brought the "cyberpunk" universe to life. Seventeen years later, The Matrix envisioned existence in an all-encompassing virtuality where 'hackers" prevail as super-powered operatives capable of manipulating reality.
Between those two films (in 1984) William Gibson wrote Neuromancer, a book that would be hailed as an iconic triumph of science fiction literature. Neuromancer was an amazing achievement from the author who coined the term "cyberspace". Winner of the The Nebula Award, The Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award, Neuromancer tells the story of a computer hacker, a cybernetic "razor girl", and their sordid contacts as they embark on a mission to pull off the "ultimate hack". As a novel, it is a richly detailed weave of future-culture, technology, violence, sex, and human nature; the perfect setup for a film. But after more than 30 years since its writing, a film version of Neuromancer still hasn't been made. And from the looks of things, it may never happen.
Serious discussions to turn Neuromancer into a film first emerged in 2007, proposing Joseph Kahn as director and Mila Jovovich in the lead female role portraying "Molly Millions". This news was supplanted in 2010 with an announcement that Vincenzo Natali would be the film's director and that the screenplay was being re-written (an existing screenplay written by Chris Cunningham and Chuck Russell would be scrapped, despite an endorsement from William Gibson for Cunningham as director).
(Above) A PS Comp showing Mila Jovovich as "Molly Millions" from Nueromancer.
©Jeff Spangler 2015. All Rights Reserved.
Currently the rights to create a live-action adaptation of Neuromancer lie in the hands of a little-known company called "GFM Films".
In their own words, GFM is "... a London based film company whose principal aim is to develop, produce, finance, and sell independent movies and television films and series.". On their site is a page dedicated to Neuromancer that lists the project's progress as currently being in "pre-prodcution".
You can see the GFM Films page for Neuromancer here.
(Above) An exceptionally badass promotional image created for Neuromancer that is likely the character known as "Armitage" (unconfirmed). ©GFM Films. All Rights Reserved.
All of the assets that you would normally expect to see catalogued for a film in this stage of development (director, cast, producer, writer, etc.) remain "TBC" or "To be confirmed", meaning... they don't exist; At least not officially. It is also curious to note that while GFM has a number of projects tagged as being either in "post-production" or "completed", there are none in production. I created with an account with GFM and tried logging in to download the press kit materials for Neuromancer, but they are also currently unavailable with the vague promise of "coming soon".
This could mean that the folks at GFM are either busy distributing and promoting other recently released film or TV projects, or that they are feverishly working to secure a director, writer, and cast for Neuromancer. I sincerely hope it's the latter.
A synopsis for Neuromancer released by GFM in 2012 reads:
Case is a low level hustler living out his last days on the streets of the future Tokyo underground. A talented thief who would break into high security computer systems by directly linking his brain into them, he is discovered and injected with a poison which renders him unable to interface into cyberspace. Unable to work, Case embarks on a self-destructive path of drug addiction and double dealings, waiting for a local crime lord to collect on money and time that doesn’t exist. Enter a shady businessman named Armitage who offers him the impossible: the chance to repair his neural damage and regain the life he once had. There is a catch though. Armitage has implanted timer activated poisons in Case’s body that he can react if Case doesn’t carry out what he asks. Placed under the protection of Molly, a professional killer who frees him by executing the crime lord, Case is put on a mystery assignment that begins a journey out of the gutters of future Tokyo and into an ever-expanding world of multinational intrigue.
A surprisingly accurate summary of the storyline from the book. Surprisingly accurate, three years old, and no longer available online.
So what now? What happens next? I will be keeping up with developments, but at this point the future for Neuromancer as a film seems bleak.
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