After months of wondering, we finally have our answer as to what Joe Cornish’s follow-up to Attack The Block will probably be.  Paramount has hired Joe to write and direct an adaptation of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.

[The cyberpunk tale] is set in the near future, when the U.S. exists as a patchwork of corporate-franchise city-states, and private enterprise and the mafia control everything. The plot involves a computer virus that is manifested as a drug called Snow Crash that is transmitted visually from computer screens to unsuspecting users, frying their brains.

Our savior from certain doom?  A hacker/samurai/pizza delivery driver named Hiro Protagonist.  No, I’m not kidding.  Yeah, I’m definitely on board with this, especially with Cornish behind the wheel.  It also sounds like I’ll be picking up the novel in the near future, regardless of the outcome of this project.

It seems that Paramount tried once before to adapt this in the early 90s with Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall steering the ship.  It never took and the studio eventually let the rights relapse.  From the sound of things, Kathleen refused to let it go.  It is she who managed to pair Cornish with the novel, which lead to Paramount snapping up the rights once more.  Kennedy/Marshall are, of course, producing and Snow Crash is now a priority for the studio.  Let’s hope it remains one.

So what say you, Chewers?  Do you like the source material?  Have you even heard of it before?  Does this sound like a suitable sophomore effort for Cornish?  Chime in below and in the forums.

Source | Deadline (via Richard Dickson)