The Ronin has learned that British writer Neil Cross is developing a project based on the William Gibson science fiction novel Pattern Recognition, the first in Gibson’s Blue Ant books. The sci-fi author, alongside folks like Philip K. Dick, is famously part of a small group of writers credited for the formation of the cyberpunk sub-genre.
PATTERN RECOGNITION – Published in 2003, the novel focuses on Cayce Pollard, an expensive, spookily intuitive market-research consultant. In London on a job, she is offered a secret assignment: to investigate some intriguing snippets of video that have been appearing on the Internet. An entire subculture of people is obsessed with these bits of footage, and anybody who can create that kind of brand loyalty would be a gold mine for Cayce’s client. But when her borrowed apartment is burgled and her computer hacked, she realizes there’s more to this project than she had expected.
Still, Cayce is her father’s daughter, and the danger makes her stubborn. Win Pollard, ex-security expert, probably ex-CIA, took a taxi in the direction of the World Trade Center on September 11 one year ago, and is presumed dead. Win taught Cayce a bit about the way agents work. She is still numb at his loss, and, as much for him as for any other reason, she refuses to give up this newly weird job, which will take her to Tokyo and on to Russia. With help and betrayal from equally unlikely quarters, Cayce will follow the trail of the mysterious film to its source, and in the process will learn something about her father’s life and death.
It’s unclear if the project is active or if Neil has since moved on to other things.
Gibson’s Blue Ant trilogy includes novels such as Spook Country and Zero History.
Cross worked on Spooks, created both Idris Elba’s Luther and Hard Sun, currently is the showrunner on The Mosquito Coast at Apple TV+. The former show recently got picked up for a second season earlier this month. The screenwriter is also behind the Guillermo del Toro-produced horror flick Mama, briefly worked on Pacific Rim, and was hired by 20th Century Fox to rewrite the script for their remake of the John Carpenter cult film Escape From New York.
This isn’t the only William Gibson adaptation in the works as Amazon Prime Video has a series based on the cyberpunk novel The Peripheral from Westworld co-creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan. It stars Chloe Grace Moretz (Shadow In The Clouds), Jack Reynor (Midsommar), Charlotte Riley (Edge of Tomorrow), and JJ Field (Captain America: The First Avenger).
THE RONIN 