David Cronenberg seems to be piling up projects at the moment. He’s currently making A Dangerous Method, about Freud and Jung, has Cosmopolis lined up with Colin Farrell and Marion Cotillard, is planning Eastern Promises 2 and now he may be attached to an adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s sci-fi romance, As She Climbed Across The Table.
According to The Playlist, Steven Zaillian is producing the movie, with the plan being to put together something in the vein of Eternal Sunshin Of The Spotless Mind. You can see why they’d think that way, as the Amazon synopsis described the As She Climbed Across The Table as being about “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.”
However don’t take this one as a given, as Hollywood has a history of picking up Lethem’s book due to the ideas and possibilties they suggest, but then finding is difficult to turn them into a workable script. Motherless Brooykln, The Fortress Of Solitude and Gun With Occasional Music are all currently in the works, but with no sign yet of any of them making it to the screen. However, As She Climbed… would seem a good fit for Cronenberg, allowing his to return to his sci-fi roots, while keeping the more intellectual edge of his more recent efforts.