Recently read that one, seemed to me he was just milking the same concepts from cocaine nights and super cannes rather lazily.
Think if a film of the book was to work at all really good actors would be paramount because its mainly about people developing sadistic tendencies out of boredom and a lack of meaningful human contact (the most interesting idea in the book i found anyway). That charachter shift is probably quite hard to portray convincingly and subtley because in the book anyway, it develops out of conventional but ultimately unrewarding and mindnumbing social interaction. And like you say, the acting in cube is rubbish (script too) and im not convinced his strengths are dialogue and the nuances of communication which is kind of important if you're making claustrophobic films. Then again, who knows where he'll take it but instinctively i reckon it'll be shite. Essay over.
Any other Ballard books made the big screen apart from Empire of the Sun and Crash? Which ones could be good?