Splice director Vincenzo Natali has been tapped to helm a big screen adaptation of sci-fi author William Gibson’s award-winning 1984 “cyberpunk” novel “Neuromancer.” The film will reportedly go into pre-production early next year in Toronto.

Natali tells SlashFilm:

I think when you read it now, it still feels very relevant, maybe in some ways more relevant, because so much of what it predicted has come to pass. And therefore, my approach to it would be to be very realistic.

I think that’s where my take on it and what excites me about the book will distinguish it from other films, in so much as, in my mind, Neuromancer is really about our post-human future. It’s about how we, in the future, are going to relate to machine consciousness.

In the same way that Splice is sort of a treatise on how we’re changing our bodies, Neuromancer could be a treatise on how we’re changing our minds, evolving our consciousness. I see tremendous potential for it. I actually think the time is now.

“Neuromancer” centers on a low-life computer hacker working for a shady figure in exchange for a promised cure to his crippling cyber-condition. The novel was Gibson’s first and went on to win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award.