Neuro-Drug Novel Nexus Picked Up By Paramount And Darren Aronofsky

By Nick Venable | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

As human beings, we thrive on individuality, in both a micro and a macro sense. Just look at how much unnecessary squabbling goes on between countries, between the municipalities of those countries, between the members of government in those municipalities, and within the families of those government officials. Can you imagine if there were a way to link us all together?

NexusRamez Naam, former CEO of Apex Nanotechnology, considers such a scenario in his novel Nexus, which Paramount has acquired the screen rights to, for a feature that will be produced by Darren Aronofsky and Scott Franklin’s Protozoa imprint, as well as Mary Parent and Cale Boyter’s Distribution label. Ari Handel (Noah, The Fountain) and Mark Heyman (Black Swan) are in negotiations to adapt the novel. Noah also boasts Parent as a producer, so one has to wonder, with all this Aronofsky talent running around, if the man himself will take a seat in the director’s chair. But I’d have to be linked to his brain to really be able to tell, and that’s just not possible yet.

But it is in Nexus, where the title comes from a nano-drug that connects humans together through their minds. While some want it removed, others want to test its limits, and when a young scientist finds that his improvements upon the drug are being observed by others, he’s caught in a world of danger and intrigue. The novel jumps from D.C. to San Francisco to Thailand to Shanghai to Bangkok, pulling readers through a high-stakes sci-fi adventure. The novel was released late last year to rave reviews, and while it is Naam’s first novel, he is also the author of the non-fiction book More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement, which kind of gives him a biomechanical leg up on the situation.