Posted in: Apple, Opinion, TV, TV | Tagged: Altered Carbon, apple tv, cyberpunk, cyberpunk 2077, neuromancer, Sword Art Online, The Matrix, william gibson

Neuromancer: Apple TV Adapting William Gibson's Classic Sci-Fi Novel

Neuromancer is getting an Apple TV+ adaptation, 40 years after nearly every major Science Fiction movie and TV series "borrowed" its ideas.

Neuromancer, William Gibson's 1984 Science Fiction novel that changed the genre forever, is getting a 10-episode TV series. It will be created for television by Graham Roland and JD Dillard in a co-production between Skydance Television and Anonymous Content, "Neuromancer" will also be produced by Drake's DreamCrew Entertainment, with Roland serving as showrunner and Dillard set to direct the pilot episode. Neuromancer is about a damaged, fallen super-hacker named Case who is thrust into a web of digital espionage and high-stakes crime with his new partner Molly, a razor-girl assassin with mirrored eyes aiming to pull a heist on a corporate dynasty with untold secrets.

"We're incredibly excited to be bringing this iconic property to Apple TV+," said creators and executive producers Roland and Dillard. "Since we became friends nearly 10 years ago, we've looked for something to team up on, so this collaboration marks a dream come true. 'Neuromancer' has inspired so much of the science fiction that's come after it, and we're looking forward to bringing television audiences into Gibson's definitive 'cyberpunk' world."

"Neuromancer" will be executive produced by Roland and Dillard with David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, and Matt Thunell for Skydance Television; Anonymous Content; Drake, Adel 'Future' Nur, and Jason Shrier for DreamCrew Entertainment; and Zack Hayden and Gibson.

The Legacy of "Neuromancer"

Neuromancer getting a TV series forty years after its debut might be a bit late after decades of failed attempts to adapt it into a movie.  Virtually all of the book's ideas have been strip-mined by just about every Science Fiction movie and TV series ever since. It won numerous awards, including the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award, and put the term "cyberpunk" into the genre and mainstream culture. It was the novel that relocated future Science Fiction cities into grungy, amoral neon-lit full of hustlers and crime and helped define the term "tech-noir".  It pushed the class warfare theme of corporations that have so much power they practically rule countries more than governments do. It featured a complex, Machiavellian corporate AI in mainstream Science Fiction for the first time. It was a direct inspiration for the Cyberpunk 2077 role-playing game and video game.

It also put the knowledge of computer hackers into mainstream culture as well as the concept of people "jacking" into cyberspace and virtual reality worlds. The Japanese novel-manga-anime-video game franchise Sword Art Online would not exist if Neuromancer never came along. It was a huge influence on The Matrix, of course. The concept of living people whose bodies are controlled and puppet-mastered by other minds was a background detail in Neuromancer but is the central premise of Altered Carbon.  Molly, the street samurai with the mirror shades for eyes and razor-steel nails, became the defining sex symbol for the whole Cyberpunk genre and was a partial inspiration for Trinity in The Matrix. Neuromancer was the first book in Gibson's "Sprawl" trilogy, followed by Count Zero (which Michael Mann once tried to develop as a feature film) and Mona Lisa Overdrive, the latter featuring Molly's final appearance in Gibson's works. To paraphrase the final line in Neuromancer, we never saw Molly again.

Except that now, we will be in the Neuromancer TV series on Apple TV+.

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