The Committee to Nuke Elysium

“I won’t dumb down Neuromancer,” he says. “There would be no point in making that version. We’ve seen things like that before. What is exciting about William Gibson’s vision in 2010 is how prescient it was. He really anticipated the post-human world. And I think we are entering that world very quickly. So, what draws me to the book – and what I think the film will offer that we haven’t seen before in the cinema – is an in-depth exploration of our growing relationships to the cybernetic universe. If Splice is about the evolution of our bodies, then Neuromancer will be about the evolution of our minds.”

Is Gibson involved in the creative process? And will the film be a blockbuster, or more of a purist science-fiction thing?

“Gibson is involved, and yes, he has been immensely supportive and I’m actively developing the script with his consultation,” says Natali. He tells me he is hoping that the success of Nolan’s film will help convince studios to greenlight a big-budget Neuromancer, but one which maintains the book’s cerebral impact. “The movie would not work without that kind of cash, and I wouldn’t want to do it,” he says. “I think with the advent of Inception there is now an example out there of how that would be possible.”