Mark Wahlberg and Liam Neeson offered leads in Vincenzo Natali’s Neuromancer

William Gibson’s seminal cyberpunk novel NEUROMANCER looks to be very close to finally becoming a movie. Movie Hole is reporting that pay or play offers have been made to both Mark Wahlberg and Liam Neeson for the starring roles in the film from screenwriter/director Vincenzo Natali.

Plot: Case was the hottest computer cowboy cruising the information superhighway–jacking his consciousness into cyberspace, soaring through tactile lattices of data and logic, rustling encoded secrets for anyone with the money to buy his skills. Then he double-crossed the wrong people, who caught up with him in a big way–and burned the talent out of his brain, micron by micron. Banished from cyberspace, trapped in the meat of his physical body, Case courted death in the high-tech underworld. Until a shadowy conspiracy offered him a second chance–and a cure–for a price….

Wahlberg would play Henry Dorsett Case, the drug addicted hacker and main character of the story. Neeson would presumably play Armitage, a former soldier whose mind begins to disintegrate as the story progresses.

NEUROMANCER essentially created the cyberpunk genre. It is unfortunate that it has taken this long for it to make it to the big screen. Natali is a visually creative director. Both SPLICE and CUBE are well made science fiction films. If Wahlberg and Neeson join the cast, we may finally get the lackluster JOHNNY MNEMONIC out of our minds. But, if all goes according to schedule, NEUROMANCER won’t film until next year for a 2014 release.

What do you think of the possible casting of Wahlberg and Neeson for NEUROMANCER?