Snow Crash: The Movie?

Neal Stephenson was recently interviewed by Tim Maughan on Tor.com here. Most of the interview focuses on a video game that Stephenson is developing, but at the end they talk about whether there really will finally be a Snow Crash movie in the future. 

Please o please do it! Relevant excerpts below:

So there’s talk of a Snow Crash movie again. Do you know much about that, do they keep you in the loop? Joe Cornish is meant to be involved.

Oh yeah. I’ve met with Joe. The story is that its been for a long time in the custodianship of the Kennedy/Marshall Company, and I’ve always felt comfortable with that because I knew they wouldn’t just screw it up. They can afford to wait until the time is right. Which is kind of what’s been happening. It’s good that we took our time, because if we’d done it in the 90s there would be this crushing expository burden of "There’s this thing called the internet! This is what it is! Lots of people can be logged on to it at the the same time!" It would have been excruciating and taken up half the movie. And a few years later it would have seemed sadly dated and wrong. Now we don’t have to do that. We don’t need to explain what an avatar is...none of that has to be explained. And the graphics can be whatever we want them to be. The graphics won’t look stupid and old and dated....

Y.T. by Mitsuki Tachiba

They don’t even have to look like graphics.

Right. Exactly. We can just film it. And so I think there’s huge benefits going to be reaped by having waited 20 years. And Joe so far has come into it with a great attitude...

...I mean one way to go with this would be to make it bombastic - and he’s not going to do that. He’s more subtle.

Is there a timescale for it yet? Are you involved in the writing?

No, Joe’s the writer. The only schedule that matters is that the big production houses have got their key release dates. It’s like landing slots at Heathrow, right? You know what plane is going to be at what gate two years in advance. It’s the same with movies. That’s the only thing that matters, and I doubt that’s been decided yet. It’s exciting. I’ve got no reservations about it.