Corona | Coming Attractions

Hollywood has been trying for 20 years to try and make a movie from Neal Stephenson's cyberpunk novel Snow Crash. So far they haven't succeeded, but Paramount Pictures is hoping that Attack the Block director Joe Cornish is the man to make it happen.

For those unfamiliar with Stephenson's book, it describes a future where mega-corps wield the power of nations, tricked-out skaters hitch rides on highways and people jack into a virtual reality where they can be the heroes and heroines in their own online worlds. Snow Crash is a lot more than that including a thriller, an action story and contains some sly commentary about the future direction that our society seems to be headed.

Paramount first picked up the movie rights to the book over a decade ago but was unsuccessful to attract the star power needed to make it a tentpole movie release. The rights then went to Walt Disney Pictures, who were equally as unsuccessful to pull the trigger. Now they're back at Paramount, and The Kennedy/Marshall Company is developing the project. Cornish was introduced to the book by Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy years back, but now that Kennedy has gone on to run Lucasfilm, Marshall is still interested in making a Snow Crash movie with Cornish.

Elements of Snow Crash may now seem out of date. The book's main character, a hacker named Hiro Protagonist, may have inspired The Matrix's Neo. As well, the game worlds postulated in Stephenson's story have become commonplace thanks to the Internet becoming a household technology.