You can almost hear the synths whining behind the neon haze. A shadowed figure drifts into The Chatsubo. Mirrors for eyes. Data in his veins. It's happening—Neuromancer is real, and it's alive in Tokyo.
After decades of false starts, missed connections, and abandoned screenplays, William Gibson's towering 1984 novel—arguably the ur-text of cyberpunk—is officially in production as a series for Apple TV+. The announcement dropped via a short promo that doesn't show much, but it doesn't have to. A flicker of that seedy bar in Chiba City is enough to ignite 40 years' worth of anticipation.
“We're incredibly excited to be bringing this iconic property to Apple TV+,” say creators Graham Roland (Jack Ryan, Fringe) and J.D. Dillard (Sleight, Devotion), the duo leading this ambitious adaptation. Their quote feels genuine—like two fans who somehow hacked into Hollywood's mainframe and finally unlocked the code.
Because for all its influence—The Matrix, Ghost in the Shell, Cyberpunk 2077, take your pick—Neuromancer has remained stubbornly unfilmed. Studios didn't just fail to adapt it; they feared it. How do you bottle something so influential that it predates its own imitators?
Well, you start with Case, a burned-out hacker played here by Callum Turner (The Boys in the Boat), a man exiled from cyberspace and circling the drain in a high-tech underworld. Then you give him Molly. Briana Middleton (Sharper) steps into the trench coat of one of sci-fi's most indelible characters—a street samurai with mirrored lenses implanted in her eyes and a backstory carved in trauma. Together, they're drawn into a heist that fractures reality, blurs flesh and machine, and redefines what it means to be.
The casting is quietly exciting: Joseph Lee (Beef) as the enigmatic Hideo, Mark Strong as the ominous Armitage, Clémence Poésy and Peter Sarsgaard in as-yet-unrevealed roles, and a lineup that includes Max Irons and Dane DeHaan. It's prestige TV meets cyberpunk noir. But gritty. Rusted. With just enough analog grime to make the future feel ancient again.
This is Skydance Television behind the curtain—the same crew that brought Foundation to Apple TV+—alongside Anonymous Content and DreamCrew (yes, that DreamCrew: Drake and Future are executive producing). Whether that makes you wince or raise an eyebrow in cautious optimism… fair. The combination is unexpected, but maybe that's what Neuromancer needs: a bit of mainstream chaos to match its digital anarchy.
No release date has been set yet, but Apple confirms that the series will drop sometime in 2026. Filming is currently underway in Tokyo, which is fitting—not just geographically, but spiritually. Tokyo is Gibson's dream rendered in chrome and shadow. Chiba City may be fictional, but you can almost see it in the sidestreets of Shinjuku.
Look—this isn't a trailer you watch for spectacle. It's one you decode. A mood piece. A promise. It shows us the inside of The Chatsubo: “a bar for professional expatriates,” where “you could drink for a week and never hear two words in Japanese.” A dive where broken people plug into even more broken machines. That's where Case starts. And maybe where we do, too.
Will it work? Honestly, it might finally be the right time. Cyberpunk isn't retro anymore. It's now. From AI chatbots to corporate surveillance to the quiet war over our attention spans—Gibson's vision has never felt more urgent. The challenge won't be making it relevant. It'll be stopping it from being too real.
So plug in. Turn on the flatline. The sky above the port might still be the color of television, tuned to a dead channel—but Neuromancer just came online.
