David Cronenberg is lining up a return to his sci-fi roots with the iconic director now attached to helm an adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s 1997 sci-fi romance tale “As She Climbed Across The Table.”
The novel follows the story of a physicist named Phillip who begins to lose romantic interest and fellow scientist, Alice, to an obsession with a vacuum of nothingness called Lack that has been created in a lab by their team of scientists. It very much plays into the director’s sensibilities to the point where the story would probably be described as a “Cronenberg-esque” tale if linked to another helmer. Here’s the fascinating synopsis from Amazon:
Particle physics, false vacuum bubbles, an alternate universe — this is the stuff of Jonathan Lethem’s novel ‘As She Climbed Across the Table.’ The tale echoes ‘Alice in Wonderland’ in its mad tumble through a rearranged reality. Narrator Phillip Engstrand is a university professor who has made a career out of studying academic environments. Engstrand is in love with Alice Coombs, a particle physicist engaged in a bold attempt to replicate the origins of the universe. The result of the experiment is Lack, a very selective black hole that sucks some things into its void — a cat, a pair of socks, a strawberry — and rejects others, namely, a love-struck Alice. As Alice’s unrequited obsession with Lack grows, Phillip becomes so desperate to save his beloved from this empty rival that he risks a journey down the metaphysical rabbit hole.
Steve Zaillian is producing the project under his Film Rites shingle with the aim of putting together something in the vein of Michel Gondry’s “Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind,” presumably a romance-driven film with sci-fi elements which, by the sounds of that synopsis, might not be such a outrageous aspiration. Author Lethem is also of course the novelist behind “Motherless Brooklyn,” a noir project that has forever been adapted by Edward Norton, and “The Fortress Of Solitude” which was recently optioned by Brad Pitt’s Plan B shingle.
It’s not known where this new project lies on Cronenberg’s priorities but will presumably follow the likes of “A Dangerous Mind” starring Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender and Keira Knightley which is currently shooting in Europe and “Cosmopolis” with Colin Farrell and Marion Cotillard which is due to front cameras sometime next year.
*Note: When originally printed this story said that Joe Penhall was attached as the writer. Sources close to this project tell us this is incorrect and was erroneously reported by Pajiba who have also now revised their story.