AppleTV’s Neuromancer doesn’t just have to live up to the 1984 William Gibson novel, but also what’s inspired it. In the 42 years Hollywood’s tried bringing this book to life, sci-fi stories like Blade Runner and the more recent Cyberpunk 2077 have eclipsed or cribbed from it to one degree or another.
Showrunners JD Dillard and Graham Roland’s approach to this dilemma? Just focus on the show and don’t try aping current cyberpunk hotness. The former admitted to Wired they can’t “out-Cyberpunk Cyberpunk,” so they focused on “bringing people to the experience of what it felt like reading this for the first time in 1984. Anything beyond that, your reference points are already going to be derivative. If you put up Blade Runner reference art, you’re already behind it.”
“We didn’t want Neuromancer’s world to feel like X amount of years after the world that we were living in,” added Roland. “[We’re announcing] right out of the gate: Don’t be looking for the iteration of whatever phone you have in your pocket 50 years from now. We want this to be its own world.”
Having Gibson on hand as executive producer has helped the showrunners when they need it. The author’s apparently not interested in the show as a one-to-one recreation, but an expansion in some respects.
