Apple TV’s Neuromancer is already one of the most exciting sci-fi shows of 2027, and it looks like it already has the perfect cyberpunk follow-up. Based on William Gibson’s seminal sci-fi book of the same name, Neuromancer is another addition to Apple TV’s vast catalog of ambitious sci-fi shows. While it is too soon to tell how it will turn out, the show’s viral new trailer spells promise.
For a long time, William Gibson’s Neuromancer was considered “unfilmable” because of the author’s offbeat prose and unconventional storytelling structure. Owing to its influence on the sci-fi genre, though, many efforts were previously made to bring it to the screen. Over 40 years since the book’s publication, Neuromancer’s adaptation is finally happening, and it looks as incredible as expected.
If Neuromancer performs well on Apple TV, the streaming service could even adapt its direct sequels from the Sprawl trilogy: Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. Interestingly, though, even before Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive are adapted, another cyberpunk adaptation will come off as the perfect Neuromancer follow-up.
Cyberpunk 2077’s Live-Action Can Feel Like The Maximalist Evolution To Neuromancer
William Gibson’s Neuromancer set the foundation for cyberpunk with its lean, noir-infused blueprint for the subgenre. With opening quotes about how “the sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel,” the book cleverly used sparse, poetic prose to give cyberpunk its early gritty identity.
Quite naturally, Cyberpunk 2077 comes off as its perfect follow-up as it fills the sky with even more noise from the blinding neon billboards and corporate propaganda.
All the ideas that once seemed rather abstract in William Gibson’s book are thrown into sharp visual relief in Cyberpunk 2077. William Gibson’s Neuromancer is often considered hard to read because it dabbles with many abstract ideas surrounding cybernetics, AI, and the blurry boundaries between humanity and techh.
Like many cyberpunk movies, shows, games, and literary works that came after Neuromancer, Cyberpunk 2077 makes these abstract ideas more tangible.
CD Projekt Red has partnered with Anonymous Content (True Detective, Mr. Robot) for the Cyberpunk 2077 live-action series. The live-action adaptation will tell an original story in the Night City universe and can be a movie or a TV show.
The perfect example of this is Gibson’s treatment of The Matrix. In his book, the cyberspace is “non-place” a character has to “jack into” from a grimy reality. Cyberpunk 2077 almost removes this separation by showing how it central physical city in itself is “the Matrix.”
Even Case’s primary story in Neuromancer stays focused on a quiet noir heist driven by secretive rogue AIs operating in the shadows. Cyberpunk 2077, in contrast, expands this vision and exposes a bigger cyberpunk world that has everything from street gangs to braindance dealers. The portrayal of AI, too, in Cyberpunk 2077 seems far more terrifying and relevant for the times.
Owing to these common elements between the two cyberpunk franchises, Cyberpunk 2077’s upcoming live-action adaptation can come off as the perfect Neuromancer follow-up.
Was Cyberpunk 2077 Inspired By William Gibson’s Neuromancer?
Like most additions to the cyberpunk sci-fi subgenre, Cyberpunk 2077, too, is indirectly inspired by William Gibson’s Neuromancer. While the game serves as a direct adaptation of Mike Pondsmith’s classic tabletop role-playing game, Cyberpunk 2020 (originally Cyberpunk 2013), it has coining concepts from Neuromancer like “cyberspace” and “the Matrix” embedded in its story.
When Pondsmith was asked about his inspirations for the game, he primarily cited Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and Walter Jon Williams’ novel Hardwired. However, after eventually reading the William Gibson novel, Pondsmith embraces the game series’ parallels with the seminal book and even explicitly referred to Gibson as “the cyberpunk writer and sage” in Cyberpunk Red.
Given how both Neuromancer and Cyberpunk 2077 franchises share many common ingtedients, it would be interesting to see how their upcoming live-action adaptations would compare to each other. With Blade Runner 2099 and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 also set to release soon, it looks like we are entering a whole new, fascinating era of cyberpunk sci-fi.
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Cyberpunk 2077
Systems
8/10
- Released
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December 10, 2020
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs and Alcohol
- Engine
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REDengine 4
- Cross-Platform Play
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ps, xbox, pc
- Cross Save
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yes
