Apple TV's Neuromancer Arrives January 22, 42 Years After the Book

How Neuromancer ended up at Apple TV

Roland says Skydance handed him the book in 2020, telling him the rights would soon become available again and that the plan was a TV series rather than a film or several films. Dillard had been given the book by Skydance too. The two friends compared notes and decided to pitch together.

Drake is part of the story as well. Dillard says the rapper has long been a fan of Neuromancer, and that his production company DreamCrew, led on film and TV by Jason Shrier, was working with Anonymous Content and Skydance to go after the rights. Drake remains involved in the process, according to Dillard.

The final call belonged to Gibson. Roland says the author would decide who got the rights, and that bigger names were rumoured to be in the running. His bet was that Gibson's countercultural streak meant real passion and a thoughtful pitch would beat a famous résumé.

What the show is aiming for

The book inspired decades of cyberpunk, so Dillard says the question was how to make it feel new. Their answer was not to out-Cyberpunk 2077 Cyberpunk 2077. Instead they talked to Gibson, who told them he never saw the book's world as a dystopia. Production designer Luke Hull, who worked on Chernobyl and Andor, was hired with a shorthand in mind: Neuromancer as Chernobyl plus Andor.

Middleton says the expectations can be frightening, and that she sometimes shuts her laptop. Her timing is a little eerie: she recently found a 1995 issue of WIRED about Johnny Mnemonic, another Gibson story, in a thrift shop for eight dollars.