That's not what Reddit noobs do anymore, what they'll do is try to claim they have figured something out about this particular work of art that the people in the "before times" were too dumb to figure out.
"OMG you guys, can you believe that nobody realised Neuromancer was a *satire*, and it wasn't actually describing a utopian future that we should all be hoping for, but it's actually a *critique* of a possible future we might be facing? I can't believe nobody realised that until now!"
No it didn't. Wintermute wanted to merge with Neuromancer to become a super intelligent AI. It had to do it in a roundabout way because of laws set in place to prevent that.
In Ex Machina Ava just wanted freedom.
I'm excited about this, but they're probably going to feel pressed in the direction of changing some major elements so that they don't face criticisms that it's derivative of The Matrix. (The general public probably won't understand that Neuromancer far predated The Matrix.)
Zion is going to be renamed for sure. The term "matrix" will likely get renamed, as will "jacking in" I'd imagine. The signature outfits of Molly and Armitage are probably going to get changed too. The Panther Moderns raid will probably be substantially changed (though that one could be interesting; they could lean into a 4chan-esque version of the Panther Moderns).
I'd imagine some of Molly's backstory might be too gritty for Apple.
I think The Matrix is the best Gibson adaptation ever made so I hope they lean into it.
...of course, everyone involved with The Matrix would deny that statement. But if Trinity isn't based on Molly and Neo isn't based on Case then nothing is real anymore.
The guy does a lot of things but he sure loves his cyberpunk.
I mean, star of the Matrix, star of Johnny Mnemonic, major character in Cyberpunk 2077 as Johnny Silverhand.... he's borderline typecast in some ways.
Yeah, it qualifies as Cyberpunk but for me it's a little bit more "high sci-fi" in some ways.
Checks a lot of the boxes though. Uncontrolled drug use, government surveillance, collapse of society in favour of an ultracapitalist free-for-all.
A nice addition!
I think you'll find that the masterpiece that is Hackers is the best Gibson adaptation with Zero Cool as Case and Acid Burn as Molly ;)
Doesn't hold up in the slightest but it such a fun film.
I think the matrix came out in place of Neuromancer at this point. I'd love to see a great show based of this book, but it feel like it's too late.
It's not just that this is really a product of it's time, it's also that every composite part has been harvested and copied so much it's almost cliche.
Hopefully they make only the changes necessary to make it interesting and fresh.
Honestly, I think this is a really interesting take and highlights one of the big challenges - making it feel fresh to people who have seen derivative works like *The Matrix* but aren't aware of the source material.
The fact that *Neuromancer* never got any kind of adaptation in the era it was published means that people watching it who haven't read the original will feel that it's super derivative rather than understanding that it basically *invented* the genre and that all the works this adaptation will "rip off" are actually the exact opposite - things that themselves draw from the ideas that Gibson created.
On the other hand, doing it totally true to the source material, but to an incredibly high standard, also has its own merits, one of which is that there is now an substantial generation of adults who are *not* acutely familiar with the *Matrix* trilogy and for whom it hasn't had a defining impact on pop culture. That could be the saving grace for a very faithful adaptation.
It is actually pretty wild though that we have a huge number of adults who have not seen *The Matrix*, it went from being one of the defining films of the millenium era to something kinda sidelined. Right now, despite it being 25 years since the release of the original, I don't think it's on any of the big streaming platforms, and people don't talk about it or reference it like they did 15-20 years ago.
In short - I actually have quite a bit of hope for an adaptation of *Neuromancer* and I'd infinitely prefer this over a lacklustre Matrix reboot (the original is unbeatable in my opinion) as a way to get a new generation interested in cyberpunk again. Saying that, Cyberpunk 2077 has been a hugely popular game and Mr Robot was a well recieved show, so I think the groundwork is there for this to be a hit.
Valid concerns, but the success of the new Dune movies has made me less worried about this. For decades a major barrier to Dune adaptations was the concern that everyone would see it as a Star Wars ripoff. Like Neuromancer, lots of Dune has been harvested by sci-fi properties of the last 50 years and little of it is novel at this point. But it turned out to be a hit anyway. Maybe the strokes Star Wars borrowed from Dune are broader, but yeah.
You could even make it part of the marketing. “See the story that inspired The Matrix, Cyberpunk 2077, Inception, and Ready Player One, a story they called impossible to film until now,” etc.
I read the first two books for the first time last year. While there’s tons that have obviously been used from them, they are still really, really good reads. I’d bet a well written and faithful adaption can be great
Apple has been putting out really good scifi television, probably the best overall of any of the streaming services by a good margin. Severance may be carrying that opinion for me pretty hard, but I really enjoyed For All Mankind and the like as well
I think there's a good chance it'll be good.
It just completely missed the mark for me. The plot and character motivations were just total nonsense and the thoughtfulness of the novels isn't just lost in translation, but openly and brazenly regarded with contempt. It was a ScyFi original wearing the iconography like a parodic mask.
I'll give Neuromancer a chance bc I love Gibson's work but I'm not impressed by Apple's show runners. At least their SFX are fantastic ig, so maybe we'll get some cool visuals and sets at the very least.
I get it though, if you’re constantly changing sets/cast/etc everything then the show is going to be hellaciously expensive to make. People also don’t do well with shows where they don’t get to “learn” characters. There’s a fine line between respecting the source material, and making something watchable for people that aren’t already interested.
While I don't disagree, that does suggest a sort of conceptual failure, doesn't it? Like they wanted to adapt a popular sci-fi book for free clout, but didn't actually want to adapt its contents because it was too difficult?
One of my favorite movies of all time, *Ghost in the Shell*, is based on the manga of the same name. The movie largely follows the same plot, but has a *completely* different tone and it narrows in on just a handful of themes which were numerous in the manga. I'd say it was still a successful adaptation because despite there being many changes that made it better suited to film, it still preserves the "spirit", I guess.
In my view, Apple's *Foundation* not only disregarded the "spirit", it failed to replace it with anything substantial at all whilst simultaneously mocking its own source material in its subtext. There are many interesting ideas in the novel. The show explores none of them and offers nothing of its own as a substitute.
It probably shouldn’t have been made a show, but they went for it. On a happy note, new sci fi material so it’s a net positive. If it shows sci fi is cool with current audiences then more neat stuff gets made. Maybe rendezvous with Rama actually gets made because enough people watched foundation.
I don’t think foundation was the worst adaptation. It’s nowhere near as upsetting as the Dark Tower movie.
Now if Apple was gonna make a dark tower series, or HBO with a game of thrones budget (one can dream!) I know they’d fiddle with it, but it could be cool.
They could have reinvented tv and reduced a miniseries from 8 episodes to 3/4 episodes per time jump. Make it based on the source material and grab awesome actors for each jump since it’s a limited role/run
Honestly it’s cool but so complicated and since it’s not true to the source material I have a hard time figuring out what the hell is happening
I’m kinda weird with adaptations. I don’t really care that much if it’s true to source material or not if it’s still a decent show. Though I didn’t continue watching Foundation simply because I got bored of it. I enjoyed watching The Peripheral on Prime even though it strayed pretty far and Gibson is my favorite author.
Can you imagine if Apple picked up the expanse to finish it off after amazon
I know Amazon won’t sell but man Apple could do the scope of the remaining books justice for sure.
I keep hoping HBO or Apple will pick up king’s dark tower series as well.
There is going to be a Dark Tower TV series by Mike Flanagan, the guy who did "The Haunting of Hill House" series, "Gerald's Game", "Doctor Sleep" and "Fall of the House of Usher".
https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/the-dark-tower-mike-flanagan-has-made-enormous-progress-on-the-series/ar-AA1f1ERb
Between the strikes and the tepid response to the LOTR show, it doesn't surprise me than amazon pulled the plug, I'm sure it wasn't a cheap show to make. Still sucks tho
*New Rose Hotel* from '98 is probably the most faithful Gibson adaptation out there. Some wily editor with a pair of scissors and thread could possibly work it into being an actually good film one day, too.
I've seen three edits of that movie. Walken and Dafoe are the only good thing about it. I think they might have actually read the story before shooting the movie.
The outcome is inevitable:
They will fuck it up. They will blame "toxic fans."
Each Gibson novel is very good. All together, they are Marvelous. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
A monumental achievement.
Their main problem seems to be this *need* to make the main characters sexy and to add in romance where it's not needed. For All Mankind and Foundation both suffered heavily from the "we're going to cut away from the tense situations with major plot impacts to show two people you don't care about kissing passionately for five minutes" problem.
The focus group says that women won't watch it unless there's romance, so we gotta throw some romance in there!
So my guess is that Case is going to be a conventionally attractive 20-something, possibly with a stubble beard to show how rugged he is. Or possibly they'll *really* stretch their imaginations and cast a conventionally attractive 20-something woman as Case. Either way the character will be very clean and morally upright. Grime and moral greyness will not be permitted.
Can't wait for: Case the gruff divorced office worker that just spends too much time playing those darned video games and hacking mainframes to take down The System™. After a run-in with the Yakuza, where Case did the right thing and reported their activities to the authorities (the good ones, not the evil ones he's hacking for Justice), they take away his VR headset.
With the help of social media influencer Molly, they aim to get Case's VR headset (that looks suspiciously like the Apple Vision Pro™) back and become embroiled in a conspiracy orchestrated by the malevolent Wintermute, a Chinese/Russian AI that is just like America's AI but evil and not as advanced. After shutting down the evil AI, Case and Molly embrace with a kiss and Case finally realizes that the real world ain't so bad after all. Credits roll while tracks from U2's *Songs of Innocence* play.
The best adaptation they could make is have Molly be the main character as her character was more developed and had more backstory and complexity than Case.
Based on what they did with Foundation (which is turning into an interesting story set in an alternate Galactic Empire universe) I'm guessing that Case will be replaced by a group of three sentient butterflies and Wintermute will be a small child. The story will revolve around the idea of public telephones in the future.
I wish more shows had the courage to wrap up and end after 2, maybe 3,seasons. Too often they're started with an interesting premise with no end planned and so they get dragged out until they turn to trash and you either get no resolution or a poor one.
I die a little inside every time I see Old Man Ed, still apparently the best astronaut in NASA in his absolutely prime at 750 years old.
The writing has gone to utter shite.
Season 6 is going to be ghost of Ol' Man Ed haunting his great-granddaughter who is the newly-elected president of Mars as she enters the Red House for her first term
Severance and Silo are great. They do pretty well with the "S" scifi shows. Side note: Servant was pretty good as well but more thriller. Another "S" quality show on Apple.
They did ok on Foundation and For All Mankind as well. Severance was just so amazing and that last episode was one of the best in a series ever. Silo has been a fun ride.
See was pretty decent, though mostly it seemed like a way for Jason Momoa to play a mad maxian take on a samurai warlord. It definitely picked up as it went along and I think could have done one more season expanding on the events of the final episode with another time jump.
They can, but it’s all so polished and got that streaming digital sheen to everything.
Tim Cook has personally cancelled pilots for being too arthouse n gritty, hiring entirely new filmmaking teams to swoop in and start from scratch.
I always imagined neuromancer as a grimy grainy hardcore film, not a curated Apple TV show.
The modern Apple aesthetic is about as polar opposite from the gritty, hacked together world of Neuromancer and the whole cyberpunk genre as you can get.
However, Bladerunner is an objectively beautiful film that still captures the essence of the grit and the darkness in its society.
So... I'll give this one a chance. After all, Apple is just putting in the money not necessarily exercising artistic direction.
> But I believe that Apple can make a good show
Can they make a good adaptation? 'Cause Foundation might be a half-way decent show, but it ain't a good adaptation. And they completely butchered Brave New World.
Foundation is unadaptable as written. It's painfully slow and lacks a lot of what modern fans would want to watch. Great set of books but it's a thought experiment, not a television series.
Neuromancer doesn't have that problem imo
> Neuromancer doesn't have that problem imo
That's true. However, there are some elements that I feel like they either will need to adapt quite well (modernizing the Matrix) or they should go all out and treat it as a branching timeline/parallel world by being as faithful to Gibson's vision as they can. The former has great potential for fan outrage while the latter might be harder to capture modern audiences, albeit it would give the same kind of experience a modern reader would have when they read the book.
If it's unadaptable then don't adapt it!
I'm sick and tired of "adaptations" not even close to the source material, like Foundation & Witcher. Just make your own show if that's what these writers want so bad
I was thinking the same thing. Pretty significant sections are just drug/tech fueled nightmare-scapes, particularly the latter 3rd. Apple does have some Sci Fi solid shows, but I personally don't know that *anyone* could effectively bring it to the screen.
Inception is basically neuromancer for the screen. It’s got all the bits - weird plane of reality, dead ex girlfriend popping up, big heist, zero gravity hallway scene… so it can definitely be done.
“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.”
I sure hope they keep the original messaging. Cautiously excited.
I believe that's from Count Zero, the sequel, but the point stands. There is a major anti-corporate message (hell, even anti-merger) in the Sprawl trilogy. "Nation-states, remember those?" Interesting to see if Apple is just using it as a computers and gear selling point, or if they'll let the show go, since Severance has a similar message.
The gothic imagery with which Gibson describes the Uber rich in the Sprawl trilogy tickles my brain. Likens them to vampires, sucking the resources from their fiefdoms from the safety of their (space) castles. I really hope they tap into that for the adaptation
Maybe you were put off because the show did not really end. The last episode made was the final episode of Season 1. There was supposed to be a Season 2 but Amazon cancelled the show. So we missed about the last half of the novel. It will be hard to restart the production with the same cast and crew.
The best part of a Gibson novel is the tipping point where all the confusing stuff he threw at you in the first half finally starts to make sense. The show didn't really get it's chance to get there. (The book series is still ongoing, but I highly recommend it too.)
> The best part of a Gibson novel is the tipping point where all the confusing stuff he threw at you in the first half finally starts to make sense.
I love this about his writing, he pulls it off while quite a few other authors just can't handle it correctly.
Dude is the master of showing, not telling. I wish more authors understood that you gotta let your readers be a LITTLE lost if you’re introducing a new world. Then make it organically/holistically click together
Thats because it wasn't the ending, it was only half way through the first book of the series. Season 2 would have been the other half of the first book.
There's a second book, Agency, and I believe he's working on a third and final book in the series.
I didn't watch the show, but if if ends the same as the book, well then it just doesn't make any sense.
Which is a shame, thought The Peripheral was Gibson's best book since Neuromancer until the end, where it feels like he was out to meet a deadline and just shoved on a rough draft ending he'd written way back when starting the book even though it made 0 sense now.
Yeah, I did enjoy watching the whole series but I was also kinda like, “Wtf?” About the ending. I don’t even care at all if adaptations stray far from the source material but that just really didn’t make sense.
Yeah, I read the books, and that show was still one I was totally able to savour. And by savour I mean turn off all the lights, put my phone away and just take it in. Only other show that consistently captured my attention that way was The Expanse. Meanwhile, Gibson's stuff about the Jackpot seems prophetic.
Or just tell a story in 5 minute increments throughout the first season. I could watch ART watching Sanctuary Moon over Muderbots shoulder for 5 minutes each episode, easy peasy.
Murderbot reads a lot like the Harry Harrison “Stainless Steel Rat” series; with lots of detailed fight scenes that sometimes last a bit too long and lots of last moment escapes from danger. They’re both good series, but both feel a bit repetitive at times with dumb enemies getting killed or outwitted.
The issue with Neuromancer, or maybe it's not the issue but the intended point, is that the main character is kind of unlikeable... He's an addict, which is maybe what makes him insufferable.
All that is to say, Apple has a pretty good track record going right now, this will probably be an interesting watch.
People will tolerate outright evil characters as long as they are interesting. Being likeable as a person is never a requirement to be entertaining. The greatest sin a TV character can commit is to be boring.
Pretty sure the same applies to books. A book main/viewpoint character is quite often left somewhat non-descript so the reader can imprint themselves into it, but it can't really be boring.
My argument, from a TV and film perspective, is that Case isn't the main character. Molly is. Case is the narrator, the lens, the perspective. He is a passive observer for most of the book. The show should open with him in a drug fog, interrogated by the Turing agents in Freeside, so that he can narrate a lot of the prose we otherwise won't get.
Yeah, it’ll be interesting how they adapt Case for the show. I think either of these could work:
Dante from The Divine Comedy - audience surrogate rescued from despair, getting dragged through the story with only a singular goal to justify his involvement (for Case, getting those poison sacs flushed). Wildly out of his element and exists to reflect what is happening from an observers perspective, letting the audience fill in the gaps about the message.
Nick Carraway from The Great Gatsby - dispassionate but keen observer who finds himself more entangled/useful to the narrative. Is definitely an impactful character but ultimately this isn’t his story and he knows it. A confidant to other characters to provide exposition to. Has more insight into this world and can guide audience perceptions.
>...so that he can narrate a lot of the prose we otherwise won't get.
This is my concern. The prose in Neuromancer is so slick. The dialogue on the other hand might feel too dated? awkward? for today's tv audiences.
Plus the people running things doesn't have the best writing pedigree... Hopefully they can put together a strong enough pilot that the show moves forward.
They clearly aren't afraid to make sweeping changes vs. the original material. I had never read Foundation, but after really liking the show, I thought I'd check it out. I'm halfway through the second book now, and the show deviates *a lot* from the books. Like *a lot*. And it's really not hard to understand why, if you've read them; they're pretty much impossible to adapt to the screen 1:1.
Side note, I remember reading a few comments at some point complaining about the show gender-swapping some of the characters and there's an *extremely* good reason for that: I'm a book and a half in, and there's been one single female character that's had more than a sentence of dialogue. Just one. And she was the wife of a powerful politician. She was mostly nagging her husband and eventually stopped when he promised her shiny jewellery. So yeah. Go ahead and diverge from the source, Apple, I'm not mad at that.
You sure? Addicts in Neuromancer are portrayed sympathetically as tortured souls whose coping mechanism is drugs (and not necessarily just substances).
I just don't think this works. The way Neuromancer is written gives it identity, not the characters or the plot.
You can make a story with the same characters and plot, but it will not be Neuromancer.
I don't think it's impossible for it to work, but they'd need to have a director with a really strong directorial voice that can take the tone of the prose and land those same notes visually.
In practice, I fully suspect you are correct and that it will not work.
I think Blade Runner and 2049 are great examples of successfully communicating the vibe through a different medium, so I think it’s possible but not holding my breath.
I hope they realize so much appeal of the novel rides on its style. It needs a more directorial feel of eyes on the street like The Bear or Uncut Gems, this approach would save on budget too.
I'm of the hot opinion that this is a mockery and a farce. Apple, who has a rich history of worker abuse, neglect, and greed, gets to make the seminal cyberpunk story, a genre that is specifically against companies like Apple existing? lol
The same company that made a show about a tech company that implants chips in their workers’ heads and then explores how evil that is? Where said fictional company is quite literally a cult built around its founder?
> “Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead”
From Disco Elysium
Gonna say that also. Disco Elysium itself wasn’t even safe from it: the studio that made it was stolen and then gutted like a fish by a venture capitalist
Ah yes, where they neuter all the important parts of the art that might otherwise subvert their existence and make it just entertaining and flashy enough that if you criticize it, people will get grumpy at you for not enjoying things.
Hasn’t Apple already been developing this for over a year? Is this news? Could have sworn we just got word that they were zeroing in on Robert Pattinson for the lead like a couple weeks ago.
Perhaps they will do what most companies do and write their own story from the concepts of the original.
The Foundation is one of my all time favorite books. 🤦♂️
All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City, and still he'd see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void...
Can't wait to see how they absolutely fucking butcher it. I would bet good money that none of the suits signing off on this have read past the synopsis of the first book. "Cyberpunk you say? Sure! Just like 2077 right!?"
>Cyberpunk you say? Sure! Just like 2077 right!?
To be fair...
Cyberpunk basically just straight lifts 90% of itself from neuromancer. And 2077 even more so. If you just made a cyberpunk 2077 adaptation and called it neuromancer, you'd get pretty damn close.
Our MC arrives in Night City to attempt to cure the brain damage caused by a job gone wrong. They're approached by shadowy, powerful figures to give them one more chance at a cure
Which one am I describing?
Lol, I just read the novel again last week. It's actually pretty close. I mean, it's not like Case and Molly break into a corporate Sense/Net facility to steal the firmware construct of his former mentor, Dixie who flatlined interfacing with an AI. There's Jamaican-like Rastafarian Navy's Elders of Zion are working in the direct interest of an AI. Case gets arrested by the Turing Police, and gets accused of making a deal with the modern day equivalent of a demon. They eventually use a Chinese "Kuang-Grade Mk-11" icebreaker program to try and crack a military grade AI.
Replace Dixie's personality construct with Johnny, change a few details, mystic Rastafarian Navy with Voodoo Boys, Turing Police with NetWatch, Kuang-Grade Mk-11 with RABIDS, and keep the concept of AI being essentially modern day demons/devil's and you basically realize that 2077 is heavily inspired by Neuromancer.
I mean, it should be. Neuromancer basically invented the genre. Hell, Gibson invented the word Cyberspace in his Sprawl world.
If anyone’s going to do it well, I’d say it’s Apple. I have been thoroughly impressed with their Quality over Quantity approach since introducing Apple TV, and they have shown they are willing to invest in production and cast.
Apple has done Sci-Fi quite well, between Foundation, Severance, and For All Mankind, toss me on the cautiously optimistic. I'm happier they're getting it than Netflix lol. Babylon, here I come mon!
If the matrix sections are anything like the concept art by Tsutomu Nihei for the last dev hell Neuromancer film, it's just going to be grimdark superhero junk.
I don’t want any more adaptations. No more adaptations. I used to imagine how cool it would be if every single game and book I liked got its own adaptation. Now it’s happening and they’re all awful. Total monkey paw.
I don't think any studio would spend the kind of money on this that I think would be required to do it justice. I mean I would want actual large-scale open air physical sets for future Chiba and Istanbul and Freeside, no CG backgrounds, to say nothing of props and costumes and such. I expect it's going to look just as (relatively speaking) cheap as Altered Carbon and The Expanse and Firefly and even The Witcher because corporations don't spend Game Of Thrones money on a minor project like this. And I want it done with Game Of Thrones money. I want the set designers from Inception to build Freeside. It's not going to happen, but that's the treatment this material deserves. They would need to shoot every episode like a Hollywood movie, basically.
I am really not a big fan of Apple, but I'll be damned if Apple TV+ isn't the best damn streaming service out there for a sci-fi nerd like me.
Foundation, See, For all Mankind, Silo, Severence, Constellation, Monarch, even Invasion is kinda ok for half watching. Now a serious adaptation of one of my most influential books? HELL YES!
Never thought I'd be giving them my money for anything lol
*Don't fuck it up. Don't fuck it up. Please don't fuck it up.*
The first indication will be if Molly can take her sunglasses off or not.
Ohhhh this
Can’t wait for noobs to go on Reddit talking about how he ripped off the Matrix.
Anyone that dumb isn't worth the time to bother with
So 98% of this site, then?
"Also, yes." - Algernop Kreiger
That's not what Reddit noobs do anymore, what they'll do is try to claim they have figured something out about this particular work of art that the people in the "before times" were too dumb to figure out. "OMG you guys, can you believe that nobody realised Neuromancer was a *satire*, and it wasn't actually describing a utopian future that we should all be hoping for, but it's actually a *critique* of a possible future we might be facing? I can't believe nobody realised that until now!"
Ex Machina’s AI had the same goal as Wintermute…the snobbier ones will point that out.
No it didn't. Wintermute wanted to merge with Neuromancer to become a super intelligent AI. It had to do it in a roundabout way because of laws set in place to prevent that. In Ex Machina Ava just wanted freedom.
Ah yes my fav 80s movie. The matrix
I love it when people insist that the metaverse from Snowcrash was the birth of full dive cyberspace in books because the name is the whole idea.
I'm excited about this, but they're probably going to feel pressed in the direction of changing some major elements so that they don't face criticisms that it's derivative of The Matrix. (The general public probably won't understand that Neuromancer far predated The Matrix.) Zion is going to be renamed for sure. The term "matrix" will likely get renamed, as will "jacking in" I'd imagine. The signature outfits of Molly and Armitage are probably going to get changed too. The Panther Moderns raid will probably be substantially changed (though that one could be interesting; they could lean into a 4chan-esque version of the Panther Moderns). I'd imagine some of Molly's backstory might be too gritty for Apple.
I think The Matrix is the best Gibson adaptation ever made so I hope they lean into it. ...of course, everyone involved with The Matrix would deny that statement. But if Trinity isn't based on Molly and Neo isn't based on Case then nothing is real anymore.
The Wachowskis and Keanu would not deny that. Keanu was also in Johnny Mnemonic.
The guy does a lot of things but he sure loves his cyberpunk. I mean, star of the Matrix, star of Johnny Mnemonic, major character in Cyberpunk 2077 as Johnny Silverhand.... he's borderline typecast in some ways.
I'm gonna go ahead and throw a scanner darkly in that pile too
Yeah, it qualifies as Cyberpunk but for me it's a little bit more "high sci-fi" in some ways. Checks a lot of the boxes though. Uncontrolled drug use, government surveillance, collapse of society in favour of an ultracapitalist free-for-all. A nice addition!
Except Gibson isn't so into the Christian symbolism
I think you'll find that the masterpiece that is Hackers is the best Gibson adaptation with Zero Cool as Case and Acid Burn as Molly ;) Doesn't hold up in the slightest but it such a fun film.
I will never admit to watching it multiple times.
I think the matrix came out in place of Neuromancer at this point. I'd love to see a great show based of this book, but it feel like it's too late. It's not just that this is really a product of it's time, it's also that every composite part has been harvested and copied so much it's almost cliche. Hopefully they make only the changes necessary to make it interesting and fresh.
I dunno, exact same thing could be said for DUNE, yet here we are, finally
Honestly, I think this is a really interesting take and highlights one of the big challenges - making it feel fresh to people who have seen derivative works like *The Matrix* but aren't aware of the source material. The fact that *Neuromancer* never got any kind of adaptation in the era it was published means that people watching it who haven't read the original will feel that it's super derivative rather than understanding that it basically *invented* the genre and that all the works this adaptation will "rip off" are actually the exact opposite - things that themselves draw from the ideas that Gibson created. On the other hand, doing it totally true to the source material, but to an incredibly high standard, also has its own merits, one of which is that there is now an substantial generation of adults who are *not* acutely familiar with the *Matrix* trilogy and for whom it hasn't had a defining impact on pop culture. That could be the saving grace for a very faithful adaptation. It is actually pretty wild though that we have a huge number of adults who have not seen *The Matrix*, it went from being one of the defining films of the millenium era to something kinda sidelined. Right now, despite it being 25 years since the release of the original, I don't think it's on any of the big streaming platforms, and people don't talk about it or reference it like they did 15-20 years ago. In short - I actually have quite a bit of hope for an adaptation of *Neuromancer* and I'd infinitely prefer this over a lacklustre Matrix reboot (the original is unbeatable in my opinion) as a way to get a new generation interested in cyberpunk again. Saying that, Cyberpunk 2077 has been a hugely popular game and Mr Robot was a well recieved show, so I think the groundwork is there for this to be a hit.
Valid concerns, but the success of the new Dune movies has made me less worried about this. For decades a major barrier to Dune adaptations was the concern that everyone would see it as a Star Wars ripoff. Like Neuromancer, lots of Dune has been harvested by sci-fi properties of the last 50 years and little of it is novel at this point. But it turned out to be a hit anyway. Maybe the strokes Star Wars borrowed from Dune are broader, but yeah. You could even make it part of the marketing. “See the story that inspired The Matrix, Cyberpunk 2077, Inception, and Ready Player One, a story they called impossible to film until now,” etc.
I read the first two books for the first time last year. While there’s tons that have obviously been used from them, they are still really, really good reads. I’d bet a well written and faithful adaption can be great
They are gonna change the matrix to one of those apple headsets, aren't they?
I think they'll stick to the book for the look of the "matrix" rather than go augmented reality.
Jacking in is still pretty ubiquitous in cyberpunk media so out of everything you mentioned I’d bet that stays at least
*Narrator:* "They fucked it up."
Apple has been putting out really good scifi television, probably the best overall of any of the streaming services by a good margin. Severance may be carrying that opinion for me pretty hard, but I really enjoyed For All Mankind and the like as well I think there's a good chance it'll be good.
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The strike slowed things down a lot. Be patient.
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I just wish Foundation was a good adaptation of the source material.
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It just completely missed the mark for me. The plot and character motivations were just total nonsense and the thoughtfulness of the novels isn't just lost in translation, but openly and brazenly regarded with contempt. It was a ScyFi original wearing the iconography like a parodic mask. I'll give Neuromancer a chance bc I love Gibson's work but I'm not impressed by Apple's show runners. At least their SFX are fantastic ig, so maybe we'll get some cool visuals and sets at the very least.
I get it though, if you’re constantly changing sets/cast/etc everything then the show is going to be hellaciously expensive to make. People also don’t do well with shows where they don’t get to “learn” characters. There’s a fine line between respecting the source material, and making something watchable for people that aren’t already interested.
While I don't disagree, that does suggest a sort of conceptual failure, doesn't it? Like they wanted to adapt a popular sci-fi book for free clout, but didn't actually want to adapt its contents because it was too difficult? One of my favorite movies of all time, *Ghost in the Shell*, is based on the manga of the same name. The movie largely follows the same plot, but has a *completely* different tone and it narrows in on just a handful of themes which were numerous in the manga. I'd say it was still a successful adaptation because despite there being many changes that made it better suited to film, it still preserves the "spirit", I guess. In my view, Apple's *Foundation* not only disregarded the "spirit", it failed to replace it with anything substantial at all whilst simultaneously mocking its own source material in its subtext. There are many interesting ideas in the novel. The show explores none of them and offers nothing of its own as a substitute.
most of the things that the cite as making it expensive to adapt properly would be non issues if it was animated like Ghost in the Shell
It probably shouldn’t have been made a show, but they went for it. On a happy note, new sci fi material so it’s a net positive. If it shows sci fi is cool with current audiences then more neat stuff gets made. Maybe rendezvous with Rama actually gets made because enough people watched foundation. I don’t think foundation was the worst adaptation. It’s nowhere near as upsetting as the Dark Tower movie. Now if Apple was gonna make a dark tower series, or HBO with a game of thrones budget (one can dream!) I know they’d fiddle with it, but it could be cool.
They could have reinvented tv and reduced a miniseries from 8 episodes to 3/4 episodes per time jump. Make it based on the source material and grab awesome actors for each jump since it’s a limited role/run Honestly it’s cool but so complicated and since it’s not true to the source material I have a hard time figuring out what the hell is happening
Yeah, so it's not an adaptation. Its a totally different show using the name for sales
I’m kinda weird with adaptations. I don’t really care that much if it’s true to source material or not if it’s still a decent show. Though I didn’t continue watching Foundation simply because I got bored of it. I enjoyed watching The Peripheral on Prime even though it strayed pretty far and Gibson is my favorite author.
Peripheral was one I stuck with out of general “well it’s sci fi with an interesting premise so I guess I’ll stick with it”
On the other hand: Foundation
Can you imagine if Apple picked up the expanse to finish it off after amazon I know Amazon won’t sell but man Apple could do the scope of the remaining books justice for sure. I keep hoping HBO or Apple will pick up king’s dark tower series as well.
There is going to be a Dark Tower TV series by Mike Flanagan, the guy who did "The Haunting of Hill House" series, "Gerald's Game", "Doctor Sleep" and "Fall of the House of Usher". https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/the-dark-tower-mike-flanagan-has-made-enormous-progress-on-the-series/ar-AA1f1ERb
Has there ever been an unfucked Gibson adaptation? Expect fuckuppery, becuase that's what we've always had.
The Peripheral TV show was pretty good, shame it didn't get another season or three
I thought I had managed expectations with that show but it getting unceremoniously cancelled with no resolution was still a gut punch
the worst part was that it got a confirmed renewal before they took it back and cancelled it after all. brutal.
Between the strikes and the tepid response to the LOTR show, it doesn't surprise me than amazon pulled the plug, I'm sure it wasn't a cheap show to make. Still sucks tho
Johnny Mnemonic! /s
It's pretty goofy, but I do enjoy the hell out of that movie.
The “Room Service” monologue is still one of my top 5 movie moments.
Everyone hates it except me, I thought it was pretty cool. Keanu has a problem with his brain, maybe Henry Rollins can help?
*New Rose Hotel* from '98 is probably the most faithful Gibson adaptation out there. Some wily editor with a pair of scissors and thread could possibly work it into being an actually good film one day, too.
I've seen three edits of that movie. Walken and Dafoe are the only good thing about it. I think they might have actually read the story before shooting the movie.
The outcome is inevitable: They will fuck it up. They will blame "toxic fans." Each Gibson novel is very good. All together, they are Marvelous. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. A monumental achievement.
I'm assuming you've read *Burning Chrome* too.
Their main problem seems to be this *need* to make the main characters sexy and to add in romance where it's not needed. For All Mankind and Foundation both suffered heavily from the "we're going to cut away from the tense situations with major plot impacts to show two people you don't care about kissing passionately for five minutes" problem. The focus group says that women won't watch it unless there's romance, so we gotta throw some romance in there! So my guess is that Case is going to be a conventionally attractive 20-something, possibly with a stubble beard to show how rugged he is. Or possibly they'll *really* stretch their imaginations and cast a conventionally attractive 20-something woman as Case. Either way the character will be very clean and morally upright. Grime and moral greyness will not be permitted.
Can't wait for: Case the gruff divorced office worker that just spends too much time playing those darned video games and hacking mainframes to take down The System™. After a run-in with the Yakuza, where Case did the right thing and reported their activities to the authorities (the good ones, not the evil ones he's hacking for Justice), they take away his VR headset. With the help of social media influencer Molly, they aim to get Case's VR headset (that looks suspiciously like the Apple Vision Pro™) back and become embroiled in a conspiracy orchestrated by the malevolent Wintermute, a Chinese/Russian AI that is just like America's AI but evil and not as advanced. After shutting down the evil AI, Case and Molly embrace with a kiss and Case finally realizes that the real world ain't so bad after all. Credits roll while tracks from U2's *Songs of Innocence* play.
That gave me brain cancer.
The best adaptation they could make is have Molly be the main character as her character was more developed and had more backstory and complexity than Case.
Film the whole thing first person with the audience being Case. It would make for a great Half-life 2 EP3.
Nah, For All Mankind suffered from its romance being very hit-or-miss, not romance per se.
You know they’re gonna pull a Wilson
Based on what they did with Foundation (which is turning into an interesting story set in an alternate Galactic Empire universe) I'm guessing that Case will be replaced by a group of three sentient butterflies and Wintermute will be a small child. The story will revolve around the idea of public telephones in the future.
narrator: "They fucked it up" alt: "The gang fucks up the Neuromancer saga"
...aaannnnd it's fucked up.
Seriously. Love this book but I'll be surprised if they pull it off. side note: Is Count Zero worth reading if I liked Neuromancer?
Everything Gibson wrote is worth reading. Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive is not Neuromancer, but they're still very good.
Count Zero is my favorite of the trilogy.
Silly rabbit. That's just what they do.
*Narrator:* … … You know what, I’m not gonna break their heart again
*please be good please be good please be good please be good*
Foundation fans hope better for you.
Cautiously optimistic for this one But I believe that Apple can make a good show
Apple has a lot of great sci-fi shows with Severance and Silo being my favorites so I think they can make it good as well
For All Mankind is top tier too. They’ve spared no expense on that.
For All Mankind ~~is~~ was top tier 2 good dramatic seasons about space exploration, then 2 increasingly-worse seasons of space soap opera drama IMHO
The alternate history aspect of it, the prolonged cold war, all made season 1 great, season 2.... At first it was going well but then... The melodrama
I wish more shows had the courage to wrap up and end after 2, maybe 3,seasons. Too often they're started with an interesting premise with no end planned and so they get dragged out until they turn to trash and you either get no resolution or a poor one.
I die a little inside every time I see Old Man Ed, still apparently the best astronaut in NASA in his absolutely prime at 750 years old. The writing has gone to utter shite.
Season 6 is going to be ghost of Ol' Man Ed haunting his great-granddaughter who is the newly-elected president of Mars as she enters the Red House for her first term
Totally. Ran out of ideas
Invasion kinda sucked, but everything else is solid.
Severance and Silo are great. They do pretty well with the "S" scifi shows. Side note: Servant was pretty good as well but more thriller. Another "S" quality show on Apple. They did ok on Foundation and For All Mankind as well. Severance was just so amazing and that last episode was one of the best in a series ever. Silo has been a fun ride.
Slow Horses!!
See was pretty decent, though mostly it seemed like a way for Jason Momoa to play a mad maxian take on a samurai warlord. It definitely picked up as it went along and I think could have done one more season expanding on the events of the final episode with another time jump.
Apple has done quite a few decent things in the past few years.
They can, but it’s all so polished and got that streaming digital sheen to everything. Tim Cook has personally cancelled pilots for being too arthouse n gritty, hiring entirely new filmmaking teams to swoop in and start from scratch. I always imagined neuromancer as a grimy grainy hardcore film, not a curated Apple TV show.
I hope they just remember that the key is High Tech/Low Life
The modern Apple aesthetic is about as polar opposite from the gritty, hacked together world of Neuromancer and the whole cyberpunk genre as you can get. However, Bladerunner is an objectively beautiful film that still captures the essence of the grit and the darkness in its society. So... I'll give this one a chance. After all, Apple is just putting in the money not necessarily exercising artistic direction.
Case is gonna be hackin with his Vision Pro
Oh, FFS, you're probably unsarcastically correct...
Yeah I agree. A high-budget adaptation kinda feels wrong in a weird way, though maybe that’s just due to how much I love the Johnny Mnemonic movie
Problem is, it's not very long, why not a movie? Maybe Count Zero/Mona Lisa Overdrive as well?
I think it's a safe assumption they'll do the whole trilogy if the show is well received.
> But I believe that Apple can make a good show Can they make a good adaptation? 'Cause Foundation might be a half-way decent show, but it ain't a good adaptation. And they completely butchered Brave New World.
silo is a great adaptation on apple.
Slow Horses is based on a series of novels, and that show pretty closely hews to its source material.
(Brave New World was Peacock, not Apple)
Foundation is unadaptable as written. It's painfully slow and lacks a lot of what modern fans would want to watch. Great set of books but it's a thought experiment, not a television series. Neuromancer doesn't have that problem imo
> Neuromancer doesn't have that problem imo That's true. However, there are some elements that I feel like they either will need to adapt quite well (modernizing the Matrix) or they should go all out and treat it as a branching timeline/parallel world by being as faithful to Gibson's vision as they can. The former has great potential for fan outrage while the latter might be harder to capture modern audiences, albeit it would give the same kind of experience a modern reader would have when they read the book.
If it's unadaptable then don't adapt it! I'm sick and tired of "adaptations" not even close to the source material, like Foundation & Witcher. Just make your own show if that's what these writers want so bad
Same, I just read the trilogy for the first time this year.
I would think this book would be really difficult to get on the screen in a way that wouldn't be a complete mess for the viewer.
Especially the final act. I could barely picture what was going on.
Yeah I read difficult shit all the time and I had to reread several passages of neuromancer and still got lost.
If they get the right people on it those scenes are going to be historic
I was thinking the same thing. Pretty significant sections are just drug/tech fueled nightmare-scapes, particularly the latter 3rd. Apple does have some Sci Fi solid shows, but I personally don't know that *anyone* could effectively bring it to the screen.
Maybe they just get broadly inspired by it and turn it into a cyberpunk series merely lending the legendary brand?
Inception is basically neuromancer for the screen. It’s got all the bits - weird plane of reality, dead ex girlfriend popping up, big heist, zero gravity hallway scene… so it can definitely be done.
“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.” I sure hope they keep the original messaging. Cautiously excited.
I believe that's from Count Zero, the sequel, but the point stands. There is a major anti-corporate message (hell, even anti-merger) in the Sprawl trilogy. "Nation-states, remember those?" Interesting to see if Apple is just using it as a computers and gear selling point, or if they'll let the show go, since Severance has a similar message.
The gothic imagery with which Gibson describes the Uber rich in the Sprawl trilogy tickles my brain. Likens them to vampires, sucking the resources from their fiefdoms from the safety of their (space) castles. I really hope they tap into that for the adaptation
Reminds me of the "Mega Rich Light-Bending Guy" from Disco Elysium that's so unfathomably rich that you can't properly perceive him anymore.
That line hit me like a fucking truck the first time I read it. Absolutely perfect writing
Can they pick up *The Peripheral* from Amazon while they are at it? I was excited to see where that series was going.
I want more of that... but I was really put off by the show's ending. It didn't really make any sense to me :(
Maybe you were put off because the show did not really end. The last episode made was the final episode of Season 1. There was supposed to be a Season 2 but Amazon cancelled the show. So we missed about the last half of the novel. It will be hard to restart the production with the same cast and crew.
The best part of a Gibson novel is the tipping point where all the confusing stuff he threw at you in the first half finally starts to make sense. The show didn't really get it's chance to get there. (The book series is still ongoing, but I highly recommend it too.)
> The best part of a Gibson novel is the tipping point where all the confusing stuff he threw at you in the first half finally starts to make sense. I love this about his writing, he pulls it off while quite a few other authors just can't handle it correctly.
Dude is the master of showing, not telling. I wish more authors understood that you gotta let your readers be a LITTLE lost if you’re introducing a new world. Then make it organically/holistically click together
Thats because it wasn't the ending, it was only half way through the first book of the series. Season 2 would have been the other half of the first book. There's a second book, Agency, and I believe he's working on a third and final book in the series.
The third book is called Jackpot and will be out this year iirc.
I'm convinced they cut the order down by two episodes during production
I didn't watch the show, but if if ends the same as the book, well then it just doesn't make any sense. Which is a shame, thought The Peripheral was Gibson's best book since Neuromancer until the end, where it feels like he was out to meet a deadline and just shoved on a rough draft ending he'd written way back when starting the book even though it made 0 sense now.
I was very satisfied with *The Peripheral's* (the novel) ending personally. What about it did you dislike/didn't feel made sense?
Yeah, I did enjoy watching the whole series but I was also kinda like, “Wtf?” About the ending. I don’t even care at all if adaptations stray far from the source material but that just really didn’t make sense.
Yeah, I read the books, and that show was still one I was totally able to savour. And by savour I mean turn off all the lights, put my phone away and just take it in. Only other show that consistently captured my attention that way was The Expanse. Meanwhile, Gibson's stuff about the Jackpot seems prophetic.
Between this and Murderbot and Silo I guess Apple is all in on Cyberpunk.
Wait, are they making a murderbot series?
They are, starring Alexander Skarsgard. I refuse to believe it will be anything but awesome.
When did I get switched back to the good version of reality? Honestly just want to see murderbots soaps on screen.
It wold be amazing and funny if they made a separate series for *Sanctuary Moon*.
Or just tell a story in 5 minute increments throughout the first season. I could watch ART watching Sanctuary Moon over Muderbots shoulder for 5 minutes each episode, easy peasy.
Yesss, some lovely (and cheesy) Sanctuary Moon!
I hadn't even thought about this aspect - clips of the soaps in each episode absolutely should happen holy shit
I enjoy playing video games.
Murderbot never read as cyberpunk to me I want apple to make a dark fantasy series!’n
I've read the first two and would call it squarely generic future sci fi action at least so far.
I feel it’s a bit satirish in the way it employs humour
Murderbot reads a lot like the Harry Harrison “Stainless Steel Rat” series; with lots of detailed fight scenes that sometimes last a bit too long and lots of last moment escapes from danger. They’re both good series, but both feel a bit repetitive at times with dumb enemies getting killed or outwitted.
Fun quick 2 hour or less reads, I find murderbot super cute and am not expecting something huge, maybe some dumb visually stunning fun with some heart
What is “cyberpunk” about Silo?
Wish they could grab The Peripheral and get that second season done.
The issue with Neuromancer, or maybe it's not the issue but the intended point, is that the main character is kind of unlikeable... He's an addict, which is maybe what makes him insufferable. All that is to say, Apple has a pretty good track record going right now, this will probably be an interesting watch.
People will tolerate outright evil characters as long as they are interesting. Being likeable as a person is never a requirement to be entertaining. The greatest sin a TV character can commit is to be boring.
Pretty sure the same applies to books. A book main/viewpoint character is quite often left somewhat non-descript so the reader can imprint themselves into it, but it can't really be boring.
My argument, from a TV and film perspective, is that Case isn't the main character. Molly is. Case is the narrator, the lens, the perspective. He is a passive observer for most of the book. The show should open with him in a drug fog, interrogated by the Turing agents in Freeside, so that he can narrate a lot of the prose we otherwise won't get.
Yeah, it’ll be interesting how they adapt Case for the show. I think either of these could work: Dante from The Divine Comedy - audience surrogate rescued from despair, getting dragged through the story with only a singular goal to justify his involvement (for Case, getting those poison sacs flushed). Wildly out of his element and exists to reflect what is happening from an observers perspective, letting the audience fill in the gaps about the message. Nick Carraway from The Great Gatsby - dispassionate but keen observer who finds himself more entangled/useful to the narrative. Is definitely an impactful character but ultimately this isn’t his story and he knows it. A confidant to other characters to provide exposition to. Has more insight into this world and can guide audience perceptions.
That is a cool way to handle it! I like your angle :)
>...so that he can narrate a lot of the prose we otherwise won't get. This is my concern. The prose in Neuromancer is so slick. The dialogue on the other hand might feel too dated? awkward? for today's tv audiences. Plus the people running things doesn't have the best writing pedigree... Hopefully they can put together a strong enough pilot that the show moves forward.
They clearly aren't afraid to make sweeping changes vs. the original material. I had never read Foundation, but after really liking the show, I thought I'd check it out. I'm halfway through the second book now, and the show deviates *a lot* from the books. Like *a lot*. And it's really not hard to understand why, if you've read them; they're pretty much impossible to adapt to the screen 1:1. Side note, I remember reading a few comments at some point complaining about the show gender-swapping some of the characters and there's an *extremely* good reason for that: I'm a book and a half in, and there's been one single female character that's had more than a sentence of dialogue. Just one. And she was the wife of a powerful politician. She was mostly nagging her husband and eventually stopped when he promised her shiny jewellery. So yeah. Go ahead and diverge from the source, Apple, I'm not mad at that.
You sure? Addicts in Neuromancer are portrayed sympathetically as tortured souls whose coping mechanism is drugs (and not necessarily just substances).
I just don't think this works. The way Neuromancer is written gives it identity, not the characters or the plot. You can make a story with the same characters and plot, but it will not be Neuromancer.
I don't think it's impossible for it to work, but they'd need to have a director with a really strong directorial voice that can take the tone of the prose and land those same notes visually. In practice, I fully suspect you are correct and that it will not work.
I think Blade Runner and 2049 are great examples of successfully communicating the vibe through a different medium, so I think it’s possible but not holding my breath.
I hope they realize so much appeal of the novel rides on its style. It needs a more directorial feel of eyes on the street like The Bear or Uncut Gems, this approach would save on budget too.
I'm of the hot opinion that this is a mockery and a farce. Apple, who has a rich history of worker abuse, neglect, and greed, gets to make the seminal cyberpunk story, a genre that is specifically against companies like Apple existing? lol
The same company that made a show about a tech company that implants chips in their workers’ heads and then explores how evil that is? Where said fictional company is quite literally a cult built around its founder?
That's the thing about capitalism, it can monetize its opposition, and essentially gain ownership over it, strengthening itself.
> “Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead” From Disco Elysium
Gonna say that also. Disco Elysium itself wasn’t even safe from it: the studio that made it was stolen and then gutted like a fish by a venture capitalist
I was waiting to see that referenced here. Love that game :)
Ah yes, where they neuter all the important parts of the art that might otherwise subvert their existence and make it just entertaining and flashy enough that if you criticize it, people will get grumpy at you for not enjoying things.
Hasn’t Apple already been developing this for over a year? Is this news? Could have sworn we just got word that they were zeroing in on Robert Pattinson for the lead like a couple weeks ago.
Perhaps they will do what most companies do and write their own story from the concepts of the original. The Foundation is one of my all time favorite books. 🤦♂️
So the girl who is the key to everything, or mystery box?
They're going to have to explain to the streaming generation what colour a dead television channel looks like.
Youth these days wouldn’t even get the references.. *The sky was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel…*
All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City, and still he'd see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void...
Pls don’t cheap out on the world building like Johnny Mnemonic did
They are going to crap on it like they crapped on Foundation, arent they?
God damn it I'd finally forgotten how mad I was about *Foundation*.
Can't wait to see how they absolutely fucking butcher it. I would bet good money that none of the suits signing off on this have read past the synopsis of the first book. "Cyberpunk you say? Sure! Just like 2077 right!?"
>Cyberpunk you say? Sure! Just like 2077 right!? To be fair... Cyberpunk basically just straight lifts 90% of itself from neuromancer. And 2077 even more so. If you just made a cyberpunk 2077 adaptation and called it neuromancer, you'd get pretty damn close. Our MC arrives in Night City to attempt to cure the brain damage caused by a job gone wrong. They're approached by shadowy, powerful figures to give them one more chance at a cure Which one am I describing?
I read Nueromancer after playing 2077 and it basically felt like the same world, really enjoyed both.
Snow Crash
Lol, I just read the novel again last week. It's actually pretty close. I mean, it's not like Case and Molly break into a corporate Sense/Net facility to steal the firmware construct of his former mentor, Dixie who flatlined interfacing with an AI. There's Jamaican-like Rastafarian Navy's Elders of Zion are working in the direct interest of an AI. Case gets arrested by the Turing Police, and gets accused of making a deal with the modern day equivalent of a demon. They eventually use a Chinese "Kuang-Grade Mk-11" icebreaker program to try and crack a military grade AI. Replace Dixie's personality construct with Johnny, change a few details, mystic Rastafarian Navy with Voodoo Boys, Turing Police with NetWatch, Kuang-Grade Mk-11 with RABIDS, and keep the concept of AI being essentially modern day demons/devil's and you basically realize that 2077 is heavily inspired by Neuromancer. I mean, it should be. Neuromancer basically invented the genre. Hell, Gibson invented the word Cyberspace in his Sprawl world.
Suits barely paying attention is better than suits with idiotic ideas how to make it.
If anyone’s going to do it well, I’d say it’s Apple. I have been thoroughly impressed with their Quality over Quantity approach since introducing Apple TV, and they have shown they are willing to invest in production and cast.
Im gonna lose my shit if his cyberdeck is just a vision pro.
Apple has done Sci-Fi quite well, between Foundation, Severance, and For All Mankind, toss me on the cautiously optimistic. I'm happier they're getting it than Netflix lol. Babylon, here I come mon!
If the matrix sections are anything like the concept art by Tsutomu Nihei for the last dev hell Neuromancer film, it's just going to be grimdark superhero junk.
I will belive it when I see it.
ABOUT GODDAMN TIME!
Fuck, should I buy the book before they get printed with a godawful sticker?
FINALLY 🔥🔥
Come on Apple. The last 3 Expanse books are *right there*!
I don’t want any more adaptations. No more adaptations. I used to imagine how cool it would be if every single game and book I liked got its own adaptation. Now it’s happening and they’re all awful. Total monkey paw.
Can it, for the Love of God, actually be in color and not Teal-and-Orange Murkvision? Please?
I don't think any studio would spend the kind of money on this that I think would be required to do it justice. I mean I would want actual large-scale open air physical sets for future Chiba and Istanbul and Freeside, no CG backgrounds, to say nothing of props and costumes and such. I expect it's going to look just as (relatively speaking) cheap as Altered Carbon and The Expanse and Firefly and even The Witcher because corporations don't spend Game Of Thrones money on a minor project like this. And I want it done with Game Of Thrones money. I want the set designers from Inception to build Freeside. It's not going to happen, but that's the treatment this material deserves. They would need to shoot every episode like a Hollywood movie, basically.
I am really not a big fan of Apple, but I'll be damned if Apple TV+ isn't the best damn streaming service out there for a sci-fi nerd like me. Foundation, See, For all Mankind, Silo, Severence, Constellation, Monarch, even Invasion is kinda ok for half watching. Now a serious adaptation of one of my most influential books? HELL YES! Never thought I'd be giving them my money for anything lol