Natali’s nice Splice

Director Vincenzo Natali is one of those guys I’ve been following for a while — he made a splash a decade back with his debut CUBE, a paranoid low-budget tale of strangers trapped in a giant killer hi-tech maze, and he followed that with the sneaky CYPHER (aka COMPANY MAN), an underappreciated sci-fi headbender.

And now we’ll get to see what he can do with a bit of genetic material. He’s working on the sci-fi cautionary tale SPLICE, about scientists who meet with success for creating new species from gene splicing experiments… until they decide to introduce human DNA into the mix (bum-bum-BAAAH). And it sounds like Natali is having fun stirring up the sticky goo of life — he says the film will feature “Very unconventional sex.“

Natali is putting together the cast, and says that “The centerpiece of the movie is a creature which goes through a dramatic evolutionary process. The goal is to create something shocking but also very subtle and completely believable.” It seems as though we should also expect plenty of creature FX work, hopefully with some nice Cronenbergian craziness or a yucky FROM BEYOND flair. I await with morbid anticipation!