Vincenzo Natali | |
|---|---|
 Natali at the 2010 ComicCon | |
| Born | 1969 (age 54–55) |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Occupation(s) | Film director, screenwriter |
| Years active | 1997–present |
Vincenzo Natali (born 1969) [1] is a Canadian film director and screenwriter, known for writing and directing science fiction and horror films such as Cube , Cypher , Nothing , and Splice .
Natali was born in Detroit, to a nursery school teacher/painter mother and a photographer father. [1] He is of Italian and English descent. [1] He moved to Toronto, along with his family, at the age of one. During his time at Royal St. George's College, Natali befriended British-born Canadian actor David Hewlett, who has appeared in the majority of films that Natali has directed. Natali also attended the film programme at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute. He was eventually hired as a storyboard artist at the Nelvana Animation Studios. [2] His cinematic influences included Samuel Beckett, David Cronenberg, [3] and Terry Gilliam. [4]
Natali's directing debut came in 1997, when he directed Cube which he also co-wrote. [5] The film became a success worldwide, especially in Japan and France, grossing over $10 million in the latter country, [6] and breaking box office records for a Canadian film. At the 19th Genie Awards, the film received five nominations, and also won the award for Best Canadian First Feature at the Toronto International Film Festival. After this success, Natali went on to direct Cypher (2002) and Nothing (2003). [7]
Following the June 2010 release of Splice (2009), [8] Natali's next efforts were expected to be an adaptation of J. G. Ballard's 1975 novel High Rise [9] and a 3D adaptation of the Len Wein/Berni Wrightson comic book character Swamp Thing, [10] for producer Joel Silver. [11] A May 2010 item in The Hollywood Reporter , however, announced that Natali was to replace Joseph Kahn as director of the highly anticipated adaptation of cyberpunk author William Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer . [12]
Natali was nominated for the 4th Annual Splatcademy Awards under the category "Best Director" presented by Cadaver Lab for his work Splice . [13] In 2013 his series Darknet , an adaptation of the Japanese series Tori Hada, began airing on Super Channel in Canada. In 2014, he directed the episodes "Su-zakana" and "Naka-choko" of the second season of the crime drama series Hannibal and in 2015 the episodes "Antipasto", "Primavera" and "Secondo" of the third season of the same TV series. [14] in 2015, he also directed the second episode (entitled "Simon") of the first season of the American supernatural drama television series The Returned . In 2016, he directed the fourth episode ("Dissonance Theory") of the HBO series Westworld . In 2017, he directed the fifth episode ("Lemon Scented You") of the Starz series American Gods . He directed a pilot for a new Tremors TV series starring Kevin Bacon reprising his role from the 1990 film but it was not picked up by SyFy as a series. [15]
A television adaptation of William Gibson's The Peripheral was put into development in April 2018 by Amazon, [16] with Natali among the executive producers. [17] Natali directed the show's pilot, plus three other episodes of the first season. [18]
He has directed the last 2 episodes of the first season for the Locke & Key TV series, distributed by Netflix.
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1996 | Elevated | Yes | Yes | |
| 2006 | Quartier de la Madeleine | Yes | Yes | Segment of Paris, je t'aime |
| 2014 | U is for Utopia | Yes | Yes | Segment of ABCs of Death 2 |
Executive producer
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Executive Producer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1997 | Cube | Yes | Yes | No |
| 2002 | Cypher | Yes | No | No |
| 2003 | Nothing | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 2009 | Splice | Yes | Yes | No |
| 2011 | 388 Arletta Avenue | No | No | Yes |
| 2013 | Haunter | Yes | No | Yes |
| 2018 | Come True | No | No | Yes |
| 2019 | In the Tall Grass | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Year | Title | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 2005 | Getting Gilliam | Documentary on the making of Terry Gilliam's Tideland |
| Year | Title | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| 1996 | Space Cases | "The Sporting Kind" |
| 1998 | PSI Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal | "Pentimento" |
| 1998–1999 | Earth: Final Conflict | "Payback" "Friendly Fire" |
| 2013 | Darknet | Episode 1 , also executive producer |
| 2014–2015 | Hannibal | "Su-zakana" "Naka-Choko" "Antipasto" "Primavera" "Secondo" "Dolce" |
| 2014 | Hemlock Grove | "Gone Sis" |
| Ascension | "Chapter Two: Part 1" | |
| 2015 | The Returned | "Simon" |
| Orphan Black | "Insolvent Phantom of Tomorrow" | |
| 2015–2016 | The Strain | "Fallen Light" "The Night Train" "Do or Die" |
| 2016 | Wayward Pines | "City Upon a Hill" |
| Luke Cage | "Step in the Arena" | |
| 2016–2018 | Westworld | "Dissonance Theory" "Reunion" |
| 2017 | American Gods | "Lemon Scented You" |
| 2018 | Lost in Space | "Eulogy" |
| 2020 | Locke & Key | "Echoes" "Crown of Shadows" |
| The Stand | "The Walk" "The Stand" | |
| 2022 | Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities | "The Graveyard Rats" |
| The Peripheral | "Pilot", also executive producer |
Neuromancer is a 1984 science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. Considered one of the earliest and best-known works in the cyberpunk genre, it is the only novel to win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. It was Gibson's debut novel and the beginning of the Sprawl trilogy. Set in the future, the novel follows Henry Case, a washed-up hacker hired for one last job, which brings him in contact with a powerful artificial intelligence.
12 Monkeys is a 1995 American science fiction thriller film directed by Terry Gilliam from a screenplay by David Peoples and Janet Peoples, inspired by Chris Marker's 1962 short film La Jetée. It stars Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt, and Christopher Plummer. Set in a post-apocalyptic future devastated by disease, the film follows a convict who is sent back in time to gather information about the man-made virus that wiped out most of the human population on the planet.
William Ford Gibson is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his early works were noir, near-future stories that explored the effects of technology, cybernetics, and computer networks on humans, a "combination of lowlife and high tech"—and helped to create an iconography for the information age before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s. Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" for "widespread, interconnected digital technology" in his short story "Burning Chrome" (1982), and later popularized the concept in his acclaimed debut novel Neuromancer (1984). These early works of Gibson's have been credited with "renovating" science fiction literature in the 1980s.
Cube is a 1997 Canadian independent science fiction horror film directed and co-written by Vincenzo Natali. A product of the Canadian Film Centre's First Feature Project, Nicole de Boer, Nicky Guadagni, David Hewlett, Andrew Miller, Julian Richings, Wayne Robson, and Maurice Dean Wint star as individuals trapped in a bizarre and deadly labyrinth of cube-shaped rooms.
Joseph Kahn is a Grammy-winning South Korean-American film and music video director. Kahn has worked with various artists such as Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Eminem, Backstreet Boys, Imagine Dragons, Lady Gaga, Rob Thomas, Snoop Dogg, Chris Brown, Kelly Clarkson, Ava Max, Mariah Carey and Destiny's Child.
Jonathan Nolan is a British and American screenwriter and producer. He is the creator of the CBS science fiction series Person of Interest (2011–2016) and co-creator of the HBO science fiction/Western series Westworld (2016–2022).
Nothing is a 2003 Canadian surrealist comedy-drama film directed by Vincenzo Natali. It stars David Hewlett and Andrew Miller.
Tremors is a 2003 American television series created by S. S. Wilson, Brent Maddock, and Ron Underwood and based on the Tremors franchise. It serves as a sequel to Tremors 3: Back to Perfection. Originally airing with its episodes out of order on the Sci-Fi Channel, it was later aired in its proper sequence on the G4 Network and Tubi.
Scott Bechtel Smith is an American author and screenwriter. He has written two novels, A Simple Plan (1993) and The Ruins (2006). Both were adapted into films - A Simple Plan (1998) and The Ruins (2008), respectively - based on Smith's own screenplays. He also wrote the screenplays for the films Siberia (2018) and The Burnt Orange Heresy (2019). His screenplay for A Simple Plan earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Splice is a 2009 science fiction horror film directed by Vincenzo Natali and starring Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, and Delphine Chanéac. The story concerns experiments in genetic engineering being done by a young scientific couple, who attempt to introduce human DNA into their work of splicing animal genes resulting in the creation of a human–animal hybrid. Guillermo del Toro, Don Murphy, and Joel Silver are credited as executive producers of this film. Theatrically released on June 4, 2010, the film received generally positive reviews from critics but was commercially unsuccessful, and grossed just $27.1 million against a $30 million production budget.
Andrew Miller is a Canadian actor, writer, and director. He is known for his role as Kazan in the 1997 science fiction horror film Cube.
The Peripheral is a 2014 science fiction mystery-thriller novel by William Gibson set in near- and post-apocalyptic versions of the future. The story focuses on a young rural-town American woman who lives in the near future, and on a London publicist who lives 70 years thereafter.
The Tremors franchise consists of a series of American monster comedy-horror films and a spin-off television show, with a plot centered around attacks from subterranean worm-like creatures known as Graboids. It began in 1990 with the release of Tremors, which spawned a series of direct-to-video films and a television series. A second television series was ordered to air on Syfy, and a pilot was shot for the spring of 2018, but the project was ultimately cancelled.
Darknet is a Canadian horror series that ran from October 2013 through March 2014. The show is an adaptation of the Japanese series Tori Hada. The series has been described as being composed of "snippets of people's lives being interrupted by vivid instances of unexpected violence or shocking strangeness" and each episode consists of several interlocking stories. The series' setup allowed for users to submit their own scripts and videos to the official series' social media sites after the season's end.
Steven "Steve" Hoban is a Canadian film producer. He has been nominated for three Genie Awards and won another. He has collaborated with Vincenzo Natali, David Hewlett, and Chris Landreth on multiple films. He is perhaps best known for Splice and the Ginger Snaps trilogy.
Matthew "BrianKing" is an American screenwriter and director known for writing Haunter, Night Train, and Cypher. He was nominated in 2014 for Best Screenplay at the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards.
Lisa Joy is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and attorney. She is best known as the co-creator, writer, director, and executive producer of the HBO science-fiction drama series Westworld (2016–2022). For her work on the series, she received multiple Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Joy's other work includes the ABC comedy series Pushing Daisies (2007–2009) and the USA Network crime drama series Burn Notice (2009–2011). In 2021, she made her feature film directorial debut with Reminiscence.
"Reunion" is the second episode in the second season of the HBO science fiction western thriller television series Westworld. The episode aired on April 29, 2018. It was written by Carly Wray and Jonathan Nolan, and directed by Vincenzo Natali.
During his long career, American-born British film director Terry Gilliam has worked on a number of projects that never progressed beyond the pre-production stage under his direction. Some of these productions fell into development hell or were cancelled. The following is a list of projects in roughly chronological order.
The Peripheral is an American science fiction television series created by Scott B. Smith. Produced by Amazon, it is loosely based on the 2014 book of the same name, written by William Gibson. Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy serve as executive producers, along with Athena Wickham, Steve Hoban, and Vincenzo Natali. Set roughly 50 years in the future, with new technology that has changed society in subtle ways, a gamer is delivered a connection to an alternate reality as well as a dark future of her own.
There really weren't too many touchstones, literary or otherwise. Except Beckett. We do owe a small debt to the Theatre of the Absurd." "Yes. He's a huge influence. But we're very different kinds of directors.
Yes I have a new film called Nothing - which is a title that causes endless confusion. It was just released in Canada a few months ago. If there is a single film that I've done that owes a real debt to Terry, that's it actually.
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