James McTeigue Preps His Next Sci-Fi Target

James McTeigue, the director of V For Vendetta and the forthcoming Ninja Assassin is hopeful that among his upcoming projects will be the adaptation of Richard Morgan’s “Altered Carbon”. “Altered Carbon” is a hard core and hard boiled Sci-Fi novel set 500 years in the future where technology has gotten really groovy but life completely sucks.

Here’s the synopsis:

“In the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person’s consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or “sleeve”) making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen. Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats “existence” as something that can be bought and sold. For Kovacs, the shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning…”

James hopes to put this all together with Joel Silver, the mad producer of such notable films as The Matrix and the upcoming Book of Eli and Sherlock Holmes.

A quote from James if you please:

“I still hope to make [Altered Carbon] with Joel [Silver]. There is a really good script that I’ve developed for a while, and I’d love to do that when the time is right, and hopefully that time will be shortly. We’ve started actively talking about that again.”

There is never enough hard edged Sci-Fi out there for my liking. Give me that old timey dystopian Blade Runner thing every time. Thanks /film for the scoop.