While Tim Miller dropping out of directing Deadpool 2 was a pretty major bummer, the filmmaker seems to be doing just fine as he’s added another promising project to his docket. Per Deadline, Miller has signed on to direct the long-in-the-works adaptation of the 1986 William Gibson novel Neuromancer at 20th Century Fox. Moreover, he’ll be reteaming with Deadpool producer Simon Kinberg on the project.
Neuromancer offers plenty of visual potential for Miller, and the synopsis for the book is as follows:
Henry Dorsett Case was the sharpest data-thief in the business, until vengeful former employees crippled his nervous system. But now a new and very mysterious employer recruits him for a last-chance run. The target: an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence orbiting Earth in service of the sinister Tessier-Ashpool business clan. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, mirror-eyed street-samurai, to watch his back, Case embarks on an adventure that ups the ante on an entire genre of fiction.
When Miller exited Deadpool 2, Fox said it would make sure to find a new project to develop with Miller and his Blur Studios from the ground up, so here’s the studio making good on its promise. No writer has been set just yet, but this is an adaptation that’s been in the works for years—Joseph Kahn (Torque) was attached to direct back in 2008, and Vincenzo Natali (Splice) signed on after that. Given Miller’s VFX background, one imagines his vision for a cyberpunk sci-fi epic might be pretty incredible.
But this probably won’t be Miller’s next project. He’s currently hard at work developing a new Terminator reboot with Skydance’s David Ellison and James Cameron, who gets the domestic rights to the franchise back in 2018. The idea is to pull the trigger once those rights revert, with production aiming to start next spring. A writers room has been assembled to find the best way to approach a new Terminator movie, but Miller is attached to direct and this looks very much like it’ll be his next film. Although it’s nice to know he’s also developing Neuromancer at the same time, not to mention an adaptation of the Daniel Suarez novel Influx. Miller's got plenty of irons in the fire.
