As Paul says choosing a short story allows the director to concentrate and develop properly a small number of concepts and characters, rather than get lost in the intrigue and complexities of a full length novel.

I don't think it's a bad a idea, although I'm really hoping the result is better than Johnny Mnemonic, which frankly could have been a lot better.

A Gift From the Culture, sf fans will remember, was the story in which a Culture person living in a backwater alien world is blackmailed by a criminal cartel (or terrorist organisation?) that has discovered his identity into using a stolen Culture weapon (an antique pistol; Culture weapons, of course, are only usable by individuals whose extended genome presents a certain degree of the Culture's trademark genofixing) to assassinate several high profile individuals in that society by blowing up a military starship upon its much celebrated return to the homeworld.

A few more scenes would definitely be required, especially since, if this is to be a feature film, a much more thorough introduction to the idea of the Culture and its politics will be required to initiate the non-sf audience.

@ jasper... It's been a few years since I read it, but if I remember rightly, In A gift from the Culture, the Culture visits Earth in the early 1980's with a view to making contact. They send an agent down through the atmosphere (in a Volvo) and that agent has a good look at what's going on. The story is a morality tale, as most of Banks' novels are.