Filmmaker Vincenzo Natali (Cube, Splice) revealed at the Interactive Exchange on Tuesday that he’s in early development on a film adaptation of William Gibson’s 1984 sci-fi novel Neuromancer.

The announcement, which was greeted by a chorus of ‘Finally’s from some conference attendees, came during the Issues & Opportunities in Crossover Projects session. Natali also revealed that he’s been working with Toronto game studio Bedlam Games, also represented on the panel by CEO Trevor Fencott.

Natali confesses that he’s not a gamer, but that he wanted to be involved as much as the Bedlam team on the game side will allow him.

“Neuromancer is the prototypical cyberpunk novel,” he noted. “It seemed natural to present it as a video game because it presents a world in which there’s not so much shooting things as there is exploring, and you can’t do that in a movie – you can only look where you’re told to look.”

Fencott welcomed Natali on the partnership in the hopes that “it proves a new model for the industries to work together. We hope to learn a lot from this process.”

Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more details on this collaboration.