Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash is one of the great unadapted novels of modern science fiction, right up there with its granddaddy in the cyberpunk genre, William Gibson’s Neuromancer. Given how screen-ready some of Snow Crash’s most famous sequences are, though—most notably, the high-speed, action-heavy pizza delivery chase that opens the novel—it’s honestly kind of baffling that directors have never managed to get a handle on Stephenson’s world of katana-wielding pizza guys, nuke-toting motorcyclists, and virtual reality paradise. The closest Hollywood’s gotten to date is Steven Spielberg’s upcoming Ready Player One, especially since Ernest Cline’s reference-addicted original novel cribs heavily from Stephenson’s virtual worlds.
That might all be about to change, though; Variety reports that Amazon has started development on a Snow Crash TV series, with Ant Man writer Joe Cornish and Back To The Future producer Frank Marshall shepherding the show to the screen. The series is part of an aggressive new push from the online streamer, which recently announced its intentions to find its “own” Game Of Thrones.
To that end, Amazon also tapped two other well-known authors for projects today. First up: comics author Greg Rucka, whose book Lazarus is also being adapted. Set in a dystopian near future, the book centers on 16 warring families who control humanity, and the one-person kill squads they use to exert their will.
The company also announced an adaptation of Larry Niven’s Ringworld, which might actually put Snow Crash to shame on the “unadaptable” scale, what with all the long, quasi-philosophical conversations, elaborate CGI demands, and lurid alien sex it features. The book—part of Niven’s “Known Space” series—centers on two humans sent by mysterious alien to explore the titular structure, a massive, dangerous ring-like structure surrounding a distant star.
Per Variety, Amazon currently has 67 series either in preproduction, production, or post. The company is definitely going hard after the sci-fi market at the moment; we’ll have to wait and see which of these ambitious new series actually make it to the light of day.