Neuromancer is one of the masterpieces of SF literature and it will finally be adapted! Here’s what you need to know about this ambitious project which will be led by a star of “Masters of the Air”.
For several years, the Apple TV+ platform has specialized in ambitious, big-budget and breathtaking science fiction series and it does not intend to stop there. After For All Mankind, Foundation, Silo and Constellation, the streaming service has acquired the rights to a new SF fiction based on a literary masterpiece, deemed unadaptable.
A sci-fi masterpiece that inspired The Matrix
It’s the novel Neuromancer written by William Gibson and published in 1984 which would become a series for Apple TV+. This multi-award winning book is considered the founding novel of the cyberpunk movement and has inspired numerous works such as manga Ghost in the Shell and the Matrix movie.
There have been numerous attempts to adapt this novel, including from videographer and special effects pro Chris Cunningham (Alien 3, AI Artificial Intelligence), director Vincenzo Natali (Cube), and Tim Miller (Deadpool).
But it is ultimately a series of 10 episodes that Neuromancer will be adapted by the duo Graham Roland (Fringe, Jack Ryan) and JD Dillard (Devotion, The Twilight Zone). “Since we became friends almost 10 years ago, we have been looking for a project to team up on, so this collaboration marks a dream come true. Neuromancer inspired much of the science fiction that followed and we are looking forward to bringing TV audiences into Gibson’s cyberpunk world“, explained the duo.
A “Masters of the Air” star in the casting
For the moment, a season of Neuromancer has been ordered by Apple TV+ but if it is successful, the series could be renewed for other episodes, given that William Gibson has given two sequels to his novel – Count Zero (1986) and Mona Lisa has fun (1988) – to constitute the trilogy entitled “Sprawl”.
The Neuromancer series project was announced by Apple TV+ last February but production seems to be progressing quickly since the platform recently announced a first big name in the casting, according to Deadline.
Apple TV+
It is indeed Callum Turner, who we had already seen in Green Room and Fantastic Beasts but who really exploded this year with the spectacular war series Masters of the Air (produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks), who will headline Neuromancer.
He will play Henry Dorsett Case, a “cowboy” of cyberspace, a hacker who travels the Matrix, in Conurb, the largest megalopolis in the world located in North America. He is the best and nothing can resist him. But one day, being too greedy, he decides to double-cross his employer.
The latter, in retaliation, injects him with a Russian mycotoxin which selectively destroys a part of his nervous system, that which is connected to the “trodes” (the electrodes of his computer console). Case then loses all ability to connect to the Matrix: for him, everything is lost, he is nothing…