There is a very short list of filmmakers who are so perfectly in tune with my sensibilities, so completely on my wavelength, that each of their projects threatens to collapse my critical faculties and reduce me to a drooling, adoring mess. One such person is little-known Canadian director Vincenzo Natali, whose enigmatic sci-fi mind-blowers Cube and Cypher were about as far up my alley as you could go before it starts to hurt. (I haven't seen Nothing yet, but I will soon.) So I've been hungrily devouring every morsel of information about his upcoming Splice, which is about a pair of scientists (Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley) who discover a way to create new kinds of creatures in the lab by splicing DNA, and then go and introduce human genes into the experiment. My squeamishness about genetic horrors (no joke: I consider Cronenberg's The Fly to be the scariest movie I've ever seen) and my affinity for Natali's approach makes me think this one could really do a number on me.

Whenever the talk of genetics and ethics comes up, there's lots of chatter around what is allowed, and what isn't. But come on, no matter what the rules are, if a scientist is splicing stuff together, and feels a high at the thought of creating new animal life forms, or other scientific breakthroughs, how can they resist that little human touch? If not the everyday scientist, then maybe some evil, cackling one who fits all the stereotypes and has some sort of evil superfunding. Whatever the case, it's like a dentist living above a candy shop and telling his kids that they most certainly cannot go there for candy. The temptation is too great, no matter what the ramifications are.

This is the environment that Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley are jumping into. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that the pair will star in a new science fiction thriller called Splice, which is being directed by Cube helmer Vincenzo Natali (and Guillermo del Toro is one of the film's producers). The movie centers on "the world of genetic engineering in which two young scientists (Polley and Brody) become superstars by splicing different animal DNA to create fantastical new creatures. They ignore the legal and ethical boundaries and introduce human DNA into their experiment." The script was written by Natali, along with Antoinette Terry Bryant and Doug Taylor, and will find life in front of the camera in Toronto this November. It's a cool idea, and I'd go see almost anything that pairs Brody and Polley, but we have to wait until at least 2009 to see what they'll make of it.

The co-writer and director of the 1997 thriller Cube, and recently one of the directors of Paris, je t'aime, Vincenzo Natali, is finally getting his next science fiction project off the ground. Splice was originally set to be an animated feature that he tried to get going for $20 million. That fell through, and now he's gearing up to make it a live-action feature with the help of visual effects houses in Paris, Toronto and Berkeley, California. What makes the deal even sweeter -- the film is being executive produced by Angry Bulls, which is the production shingle of Don Murphy, Susan Montford and Guillermo del Toro.

Natali, who wrote the script with Antoinette Terry Bryan and Doug Taylor, has described Splice as "the Bonnie and Clyde of genetics." The film centers on two young scientists and genetic engineers who become famous when they splice different animal DNA to create a bunch of new, fantastical creatures. Of course, once they've dipped their toes in, they want to dive in, so they ignore legal and ethical boundaries and start adding human DNA to the experiment. So, obviously, the effects come in with the need to see the collection of hybrid creatures that the scientists create. There's definitely no reason not to be live-action, since effects can create just about any creature we can scheme up. The team is currently bringing together its cast, and the film will shoot this summer in Toronto.