Jonathan Lethem's 1997 novel is a metaphysical love story about a woman obsessed with a void: no surprise then that David Cronenberg is interested in directing **As She Climbed Across the Table.
What is surprising is that yet another project should be attached to the Croner, who seems to be attracting potential films like a magnet attracts iron filings. Currently at work on the Freud / Jung drama A Dangerous Method, he's also got adaptations of Martin Amis' London Fields and Don Delillo's Cosmopolis in the works, not to mention a sequel to **Eastern Promises and, weirdly, a remake of his own version of **The Fly.
We hope he drops that last one, like he already apparently dropped the Robert Ludlum adaptation The Matarese Circle, but otherwise all we have to say is that more Cronenberg can only be a good thing, and As She Climbed Across the Table in particular sounds like something we'd queue to see. Twice.
Lethem's novel involves a physicist, Alice, creating a "nothingness" called The Lack. And if that sounds like it precludes Viggo Mortensen starring, fear not! He can play Philip, whose obsession with Alice matches Alice's addiction to her discovery.
Pajiba describes the potential film, being produced by Steve Zaillian, as in the vein of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. If successful, the meeting of minds between Lethem and Cronenberg could lead to further dream projects. Lethem also wrote the excellent Motherless Brooklyn: a noirish detective story whose protagonist has Tourettes Syndrome (catchphrase: "Eat me, Bailey!"). Edward Norton has been trying to set that up as a movie for several years. Perhaps its time is coming...