7. The Count of Monte Cristo Goes To Space
And so we move from one great unfilmed cyberpunk novel to the next. Despite luke warm praise upon its release in 1956, Alfred Besters "The Stars My Destination" has gone on to become not only one of the most acclaimed cult sci-fi novels of the 20th century, but it's also directly responsible for sowing the seeds that would later blossom into the entire cyberpunk sub-genre. It's not hard to see why it landed with such a damp thwap back in the mid 50's. It's relentlessly dark vision of the future, confused anti-hero and constantly shocking plot lines were a little at odds with what audiences where used to reading at the time. At its core the novel is a kind of "The Count of Monte Cristo" in space. Albeit one complete with tiger face tattoos, telepathy, megacorporation's with governmental powers and self-induced teleportation. Over the years countless screenwriters, producers, directors and actors have lobbied to give the story a big screen make-over, all to no avail. Stephen de Souza (the writer behind 48 Hours, The Running Man and Commando), Joel Silver and even Richard "seriously, there is not a gerbil up there" Gere have all attempted to get this thing made and one time or another. Bernd Eichinger (the producer responsible for The Neverending Story) likely got closest to getting it made. Hell, he churned through illustrators and screenwriters in an attempt to super-condense the books juggernaut narrative and unique vision into something workable....but this was back in the mid 90's.... As of 2006 Universal Pictures owns the rights to the movie version of the story. But in all honesty, this one is likely to remain forever floating through the vast uncaring void with nothing even approaching a destination to speak of.