News From The Web - Joe Cornish Gets His Hands On Snow Crash!

For those of you who don't know Snow Crash is an award nominated science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson. It is also a novel that I happen to have read (now you definitely wouldn't know that). After a few false starts and many, many rumours about a big screen adaptation it emerged this week that Joe Cornish is set to write and direct in association with Paramount Pictures.

Cornish is best known for comedy and as part of the radio/TV duo Adam and Joe with his partner Adam Buxton. In 2011 however he made his directorial debut with comedy horror film Attack The Block (2011)  and  since then has co-wrote The Adventures Of Tintin (2011) with Steven Moffat and Edgar Wright.

Attack the Block was a hit to be fair. As his first turn in the directors chair Cornish pulled it out the bag. Okay so it wasn't a piece of perfection.On a personal level it was no where near scary enough to slip into the horror genre but it certainly took a stand as a piece of drama that set him up for his next project.I overall enjoyed Tintin too, it may have lacked some of the depth that people were expecting but it flowed with plenty to keep me entertained. I do worry though that Cornish may loose focus with Snow Crash, a story of complexity. 

Set in the future, in a dystopian US to be exact. With the government in pieces the country is split into territories, with each one being controlled by completing corporate organisations. Hiro, the protaginist of the book, is a computer hacker investigating Snow Crash; a drug of extreme potency that not only effects the body but also the human mind through virtual means.

I wasn't kidding when I said it was complex but done right, an adaptation has the potential to mind blowing. I'm just hoping that Cornish can use everything he has got to make it so.