Apple TV+’s status as tech giant means that it makes total sense for them to be the reigning monarch of streaming sci-fi original programming. In that realm, The Gorge currently has audiences hooked with a creature-feature love story for Valentine’s Day, and in the TV series department, For All Mankind, Severance, Silo, and Foundation are only a few of the juggernauts that the streaming service offers.
Of those titles, Silo is an astounding feat of worldbuilding from showrunner Graham Yost while adapting Hugh Howey’s literary saga, but an even more imposing challenge sits on the horizon with a cyberpunk classic, Neuromancer. The William Gibson novel has long been considered “unfilmable” despite multiple efforts, but Apple TV+ is throwing down the gauntlet at itself. Let’s wind through the maze of clues on what to expect.
Plot
Well, if Frank Herbert’s Dune could eventually yield two (and maybe more) acclaimed blockbusters from Denis Villeneuve, then Neuromancer has a shot at success. One of the more difficult aspects of bringing the mid-1980s novel to the screen, however, is that the book was considered before its time, and now, the opposite might be true. Yet Apple TV+ is serious about their sci-fi, and already, star Callum Turner has poured effusive praise upon co-showrunners Graham Roland (Dark Winds, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan) and J.D. Dillard (Devotion, Sweetheart) while speaking with Screenrant about his admiration for Gibson’s “poetic” cyberpunk classic.
In that same interview, Turner revealed (as of this month) that he has been filming for weeks Tokyo set (situated across Tokyo Bay), which is where his character, Case, begins the novel amid a miserable underground existence. As a console cowboy and disgraced super-hacker, Case can’t stay out of high-stakes trouble, and Apple TV+’s series description reveals that Case will be “thrust into a web of digital espionage and high stakes crime with his partner Molly, a razor-girl assassin with mirrored eyes aiming to pull a heist on a corporate dynasty with untold secrets.”
The first Neuromancer season will be 10 episodes long, and nobody has ruled out followups. Gibson did add two other books, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, to finish his Sprawl trilogy, so more seasons could happen.
Whether or not this series lives up to the Philip K. Dick Award of its source material, at least we know that this Apple TV+ series will take care to avoid any pitfalls that led to an abandoned Fox effort from Tim Miller (Deadpool) and Simon Kinberg (X-Men). Those are small sci-fi mercies.
Cast
Callum Turner (Masters Of The Air) will star as as Case with Briana Middleton (Sharper) as Molly and Joseph Lee (Beef) as Hideo, a ninja bodyguard. Mark Strong has also joined the cast, according to Deadline, as “Armitage, Case and Molly’s mysterious employer.”
Release Date
Apple TV+ hasn’t revealed a window yet, but the tech giant announced the series a year ago, and filming is ongoing. As with the streaming service’s other sci-fi offerings, this won’t be a speedy series to produce like, say, Gary Oldman brilliantly farting around in Slow Horses. So perhaps Neuromancer in 2026 is realistic?
Trailer
Because I can’t help it, and because there is no Neuromancer trailer yet, please enjoy this reminder of what mid-1990s hackers surely were not doing with the Hackers trailer.
