Onslaught of On-Line Plots : Cyberspace and Virtual Reality Are Latest Film Settings as E-Mail and the Internet Become Grist for Hollywood

If you’re convinced that an expensive computer, sophisticated software and the technical savvy of a “propeller-head” is the only route to the information superhighway, take heart.

With studio development and production pipelines around town filled with close to a dozen high-tech films dealing with computers, virtual reality and the Internet, the only thing you may need is a movie ticket.

And why not? With reports of computer break-ins routinely making the evening news and hackers being heralded as heroes by many denizens of cyberspace, it’s a subject that seems to have slipped into the mainstream consciousness faster than you can say “Bill Gates.” That probably means that a slew of movies can’t be too far behind.

Even Steven Spielberg, considered one of Hollywood’s most high-profile techno-buffs, is developing a computer movie at Amblin/Universal. Based on an idea by the Oscar-winning director, “Mainframe” deals with “artificial intelligence,” a term applied to computers that can think and theoretically take on a life of their own.

Legendary director Stanley Kubrick’s next project is rumored to be an artificial intelligence story aptly titled “AI.” According to sources, Kubrick has already been testing various special-effects processes for the film at George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic.

And Miramax recently said it would develop a film based on the pursuit and arrest of Kevin Mitnick, America’s most-wanted hacker.

One film likely to benefit from the current computer craze--with computers installed in close to 50 million homes throughout the country--is UA’s “Hackers,” which is due to hit theaters this summer. Directed by Iain Softley from a script by Rafael Moreau, it’s the story of a group of teen-age cyber-surfers who make their way through the Internet until one of their excursions makes them prime suspects in a high-tech industrial conspiracy case.

But Hollywood’s current fascination isn’t just with hackers: It’s with all facets of the computer world, especially on-line services, e-mail and the Internet--not surprising given the sudden explosion of interest in exploring cyberspace.

“I get pitched stories about on-line romance, on-line thrillers and on-line horror about as often as I send e-mail, which is quite frequently,” says producer Jim Wedaa, who heard dozens of computer pitches while he was a studio executive at Hollywood Pictures. Now a producer at Parallax, Wedaa says he hears even more pitches about computers.

“Five years ago, I would hear a pitch for a computer story every few months and most executives didn’t understand what a movie with computers would be about,” Wedaa recalls. “Two years ago, more people were pitching computer ideas and everybody was buying. Now even more people are pitching computer ideas, but nobody’s buying.”

One high-tech on-line thriller already in production is Columbia’s “The Net,” which stars “Speed” star Sandra Bullock as a computer systems analyst who gets caught up in a murder scheme after accidentally tapping into a classified computer program. Directed by Irwin Winkler, the production recently shot scenes at MacWorld, a San Francisco gathering of Macintosh computer aficionados.

Another on-line thriller, New Regency’s “Copycats,” starring Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter, just wrapped production. In the film, directed by Jon Amiel from a script by Frank Pierson, Weaver plays an agoraphobic who maintains her link to the world through her computer, while being stalked by an on-line psycho.

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Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, producers of “Top Gun” and the soon-to-be-released “Crimson Tide,” have turned their attention from flying and submarines to the on-line world and are currently developing “f2f”--computer shorthand for “face to face”--at Touchstone Pictures. Based on Phillip Finch’s soon-to-be-published novel, it’s the story of a serial killer who finds his victims through an on-line service.

Finch, who’s currently writing the script, feels that the time is now right for films using cyberspace as a backdrop.

“Two years ago this would have been impossible to sell,” Finch admits. “I think the thing that’s driving the interest all of a sudden is that the number of users is increasing very fast. This is a fact of life that affects a lot of people. Within the last year people saw the word Internet a lot. They now know what it is.”

With that in mind, it’s not surprising that even a classic story is being recycled and given a face lift courtesy of the computer and e-mail.

“The Shop Around the Corner,” Ernst Lubitsch’s 1940 comedy starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullivan as co-workers who don’t realize they are lonely hearts pen pals, is being developed by producer Lauren Shuler-Donner for Turner Pictures. According to sources, the latest version will be written by “Sleepless in Seattle” director and co-screenwriter Nora Ephron and playwright Wendy Wasserstein and will feature the two pen pals communicating ‘90s style with electronic mail.

“It’s as if people are looking at old movie projects, crossing out the word letter and replacing it with e-mail and crossing out the phrase singles’ bar and replacing it with on-line computer ,” Wedaa says.

Of course, computers and Hollywood are nothing new. In 1992, Robert Redford starred in “Sneakers,” the story of a group of hackers who, as modern-day Robin Hoods, steal from the Republican Party and give the money to Greenpeace. A decade earlier there was “WarGames,” in which Matthew Broderick played a teen-age hacker who taps into the North America Air Defense Command system.

And let’s not forget last year’s “Disclosure,” the Warner Bros. film based on Michael Crichton’s best-selling novel about sexual harassment set against the backdrop of a high-tech company. That film--which has grossed more than $80 million domestically--contained just about everything relevant to computers, including e-mail, CD-ROM drives and virtual reality.

Michael Backes, who co-wrote the screen version of the technology-filled “Rising Sun” and is the founder of Rocket Science Games, a company that produces interactive computer games, insists, however, that technology isn’t enough to sell a film.

“It has to do with how it’s integrated into the story,” Backes says. “You have to come up with a representation for the technology that is compelling, but not the focus. These are complex topics, and it takes some real intelligence to distill this stuff down.”

As evidence of this, all one has to do is remember some of the computer-based films that failed to score at the box office, including “Ghost in the Machine” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” which starred Whoopi Goldberg as a computer programmer. Many observers agree that when “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” was released in 1986, not enough people were computer literate enough to understand the plot.

“In a lot of ways, you have the same problems that journalism movies have,” Backes notes. “To show that the protagonist is typing furiously is not very interesting. The environment of high-tech by itself is rarely compelling.”

Another film from the “everything-old-is-new-again” school is “The Class of Monte Cristo,” based on Alexandre Dumas’ classic story of revenge, “The Count of Monte Cristo.” Being developed at Universal by producers Cari-Esta Albert and Marc Sternberg and rewritten by Ian Abrams (“Undercover Blues”), the new version features a high school nerd-made-good who takes vengeance on his high school class through the use of sophisticated computer technology.

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Other computer-related films in the works include two summer releases: Paramount’s “Virtuosity,” starring Denzel Washington as a tracker of a computer-generated villain gone haywire, and TriStar’s “Johnny Mnemonic,” starring Keanu Reeves as a high-tech courier with a computer chip in his brain. Another in the development pipeline is the low-budget actioner “User Hostile,” about a man and woman on the run from killers, who must turn to their on-line friends for help.

But not everyone is convinced that Hollywood’s fascination with the computer is a sure bet at the box office.

“Where’s the danger in something that’s on-line?” asks one skeptical producer. “If it’s a computer, you can just turn it off.”

And that’s just what Hollywood filmmakers hope audiences won’t do with the coming crop of computer-related films.