William Gibson's 'Neuromancer' is coming to Apple TV+

AppleInsider

Apple TV+ has announced the development of a ten-episode science-fiction drama based on William Gibson's award-winning novel "Neuromancer."


Image Credit: Apple TV+

The series will center around a skilled but troubled hacker named Case, who is forced into a dangerous world of digital espionage and high-stakes crime. Alongside his partner Molly, a professional assassin, Case will attempt to pull off a daring heist against a powerful corporate dynasty.

"Neuromancer" is considered to be one of the pioneering and highly regarded works in the cyberpunk genre and has received several prestigious awards, such as the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. The novel is the first book in the "Sprawl" trilogy and is followed by "Count Zero" and "Mona Lisa Overdrive."

The show will be created for television by Graham Roland, known for his work on "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan" and "Dark Winds," and JD Dillard, who has previously worked on "Devotion," "The Outsider," and "Sleight." Roland will be the showrunner, and Dillard is set to direct the pilot episode.

"We're incredibly excited to be bringing this iconic property to Apple TV+," said 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."

The series will join other sci-fi powerhouses on Apple TV+, such as "Foundation," "Invasion," and upcoming series "Constellation."



Read on AppleInsider

mattinoz

Is Gibson himself attached?
He worked directly with the team on the Peripheral, and it was really good. Looking forward to season 2. 

StrangeDays

Badass. Well has the potential to be anyway. 

Didn’t love Jack Ryan on prime, tho, hopefully this is better. 

foregoneconclusion

StrangeDays said:

Badass. Well has the potential to be anyway. 

Didn’t love Jack Ryan on prime, tho, hopefully this is better. 

Never saw Jack Ryan but Dark Winds is good stuff. Agree on the potential. 

spheric

Wow. 

WAY stoked about this! 

mkrmkr

mattinoz said:

Is Gibson himself attached?
He worked directly with the team on the Peripheral, and it was really good. Looking forward to season 2. 

Sorry. The Peripheral was cancelled. 

danox

Forty years too late........

badmonk

This will be great, can’t wait to watch it, 40-60 years is about right…after all Dune.

entropys

StrangeDays said:

Badass. Well has the potential to be anyway. 

Didn’t love Jack Ryan on prime, tho, hopefully this is better. 

The first season of Jack Tyan was quite good. The second season was a betrayal.

Ofer

I love this book and have read and re-read it so many times! This is so exciting! I hope Gibson is attached to this project and that he will be able to have a lot of input into it.

Xed

Another sci-fi classic. Nice!

Unfortunately there will be many that will complain that a great story will be too slow because it was made by Michael Bay using a 1980s network sci-fi budget.

beowulfschmidt

I am not convinced that a work as old as this one, a product and reflection of its times, can be made today without changing it such that will be virtually unrecognizable as the original work, except for the name.  I point to Foundation, which I've found to be good on its own merits, but not really all that representative of the original novels, except in the broadest sense.

Note that this doesn't mean I think it will be bad, just not very faithful to the original.

Xed

beowulfschmidt said:

I am not convinced that a work as old as this one, a product and reflection of its times, can be made today without changing it such that will be virtually unrecognizable as the original work, except for the name.  I point to Foundation, which I've found to be good on its own merits, but not really all that representative of the original novels, except in the broadest sense.

Note that this doesn't mean I think it will be bad, just not very faithful to the original.

I'm all for the quality writing of Foundation with a huge difference from the novels. Often it has to be to translate to a screen and be excellent. I've only read a handful of novels that translated as a movie or TV series well that that weren't also written with that in mind. Netflix's live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender also made lot of changes and that had source material an animated cartoon series, not a novel.

danox

There was never a doubt that Foundation or Dune wouldn't look good (great technically big bucks were spend) just saying star spanning empire doesn't make up for the lack of story development, acting, and pacing, do you even care about most of the characters in Foundation or Dune àla a Quiet Place, Bird Box, Pitch Black, or the Thing one or two......answer probably is no.

Neuromancer will look good just like Foundation or Dune and it will be better than Invasion which is by far the worst of the three.

Ofer

danox said:

There was never a doubt that Foundation or Dune wouldn't look good (great technically big bucks were spend) just saying star spanning empire doesn't make up for the lack of story development, acting, and pacing, do you even care about most of the characters in Foundation or Dune àla a Quiet Place, Bird Box, Pitch Black, or the Thing one or two......answer probably is no.

Neuromancer will look good just like Foundation or Dune and it will be better than Invasion which is by far the worst of the three.

Speak for yourself. I love the new Dune film. Already have my tickets ready for part II

StrangeDays

entropys said:

StrangeDays said:

Badass. Well has the potential to be anyway. 

Didn’t love Jack Ryan on prime, tho, hopefully this is better. 

The first season of Jack Tyan was quite good. The second season was a betrayal.

Even the first season remained in my junk tv bucket. 

tht

I read the book 30 years, and I frankly don't remember much of what happened. Given that, the computing details have to be modernized unless they do a straight-up alternate reality that happens in the 1990s or early 2000s where we don't see the march of technology that we've seen.

So if the show is set in today's reality, but another 25 years in the future, a lot of the book's details will have to be modernized. All the mega prefixes will have to be changed to peta/exa prefixes. Landline phones? All gone. Japan didn't become the leading nation in programming, no orbital space colony. Russia? Hmm? Still mostly the same given recent events? Might lose its charm. But, today's technology has some nice intersection with what is in the book. Would be interesting.

newvideoaz

beowulfschmidt said:

I am not convinced that a work as old as this one, a product and reflection of its times, can be made today without changing it such that will be virtually unrecognizable as the original work, except for the name.  I point to Foundation, which I've found to be good on its own merits, but not really The all that representative of the original novels, except in the broadest sense.

Note that this doesn't mean I think it will be bad, just not very faithful to the original.

The Et

The Eternal challenge with Foundation has always been that it’s timeline is so broad that the moment you start to understand and care about any of the characters - the plot/world/era is gone, and you essentially have to restart story arcs for every transition. Clark needed to do that to tell his brilliant “evolving civilations over time” stories - but the same challenge is deadly for keeping a recurring episodic audience engaged. Apple and their production partners did as good a job as possible - but it was never going to be as fully engaging as something like Dune where everything revolves around a core of consistent central characters we can understand and root for. 

Just the nature of the different scopes.