Vincenzo Natali Neuromanced

Huh. Synchronicity much?

Vincenzo Natali, director of Cube, Cypher and the forthcoming subject of the last post, Splice - my second most highly anticipated film of 2010 after Chris Nolan's Inception - is to helm an adaptation of William Gibson's literary cyberpunk landmark, Neuromancer.

The story just broke. This is what I would call Very Good News - especially considering the caliber of the talent previously attached to the project. Hayden Christensen was to star (need I say more?) with veritable unknown director Joseph Khan in the big chair, whose previous work on music videos by the likes of Britney Spears, Blink 182 and the Backstreet Boys hardly told a happy tale of the Neuromancer adaptation's prospects.

Natali, meanwhile, after an absence of some years, looks to be making his much-anticipated return with great vengeance and furious anger via Splice, and the Neuromancer movie sounds like a perfect fit to his talents.

Though I'll confess: I have a few of his books in the big ol' library, Neuromancer included, but I haven't read any William Gibson. Anyone out there prepared to act as his champion?

The Splice of Life

I've written about Splice before, in the sixth part of Speculative Cinema in 2010, but it's my second most anticipated film of the year - after Inception, of course - and what better excuse could there be to draw it out from the confines of that sprawling feature series than the release of a new trailer?

Have a gander at this:

My excitement for Splice derives largely from my love of director Vincenzo Natali's back-catalogue of brilliant film, beginning with Cube and encompassing Nothing and the tremendously underrated Cyper. Excepting a documentary he shot for Terry Gilliam's Tideland, it's been seven years since Natali made a movie, and the high sci-fi concept he returns to the silver screen to explore is so packed full of promise it's fit to burst.

Elsa and Clive, two rebellious young scientists, defy legal and ethical boundaries and forge ahead with a dangerous experiment: splicing together human and animal DNA to create a new organism. Named Dren, the creature rapidly develops from a deformed female infant into a beautiful but dangerous winged human-chimera, who forges a bond with both of her creators - only to have that bond turn deadly.

The trailer embedded above is perhaps too overwrought with typical pre-release hyberbole to properly represent Splice, though it's safe to say that film will be as seamless a hybrid of ultra-stylish cinematography and effective low-fi execution as I've come to expect from Natali. And while my previous impressions of Splice might yet bear out - that it would be "a more considered take on the sort of subject matter explored in Stephen Chow's hilarious CJ-7" - it seems more of a thriller than I'd imagined it would be.

Still, I remain excited. Whatever the doubts this trailer sets romping about my mind, Natali has not disappointed me yet, and though there's a first time for everything, I don't believe Splice will mark that first time.

I'll leave you with another first look at Splice, with this brief scene being, I would wager, more representative of the final film than the rather contrived trailer:

Anyone else half as psyched about Splice as the Speculative Scotsman is?