After being inundated with offers following last year’s standout Attack the Block, director Joe Cornish has been tapped to adapt Neil Stephenson’s bestselling novel Snow Crash.  Cornish will write and direct an adaptation of the book, which takes place in the near future where the U.S. has been divided up into corporate franchise city-states.  The story centers on Hiro Protagonist (real name), a computer hacker who tries to stop a virus called Snow Crash that is transmitted virally through computer screens and fries unsuspecting users’ brains.  Hit the jump for more, including a synopsis of the book.

snow-crash-book-cover

The project has been in development for years, but producer Kathleen Kennedy (Jurassic Park, A.I. Artificial Intelligence) recently brought the book to Cornish’s attention and now Deadline reports that the two are making the picture at Paramount.  Kennedy is Steven Spielberg’s longtime producer, and Cornish worked on the screenplay for Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin.

I’ve yet to read Snow Crash but I know the book has a devoted and passionate fanbase.  Attack the Block was a hell of a feature directorial debut for Cornish, so hopefully he can capitalize on that momentum with this high profile project.  As a screenwriter, Cornish is also working on Ant-Man for Marvel alongside Edgar Wright. Read the synopsis for Snow Crash below.

Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison—a writer so original he redefines the way we look at the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller of the information age.

In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he’s a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that’s striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous…you’ll recognize it immediately. [Amazon]