Speaking of Gibson adaptations, we're now uncomfortably close to seeing Apple TV's Drake-produced Neuromancer streaming series, the culmination of nearly 40 years of failed promises, aborted attempts, and empty threats to put the cyberpunk urtext onscreen.
Early signs aren't great. Apple has acquired a reputation as a home for ambitious science fiction, but I've found its previous adapted series to be sloppy and meandering, barely held together by a few standout performances (Lee Pace and Jared Harris in Foundation, Rebecca Ferguson in Silo, the Russell boys in Monarch).
Looking over the cast list for Neuromancer, it's hard to imagine anyone shouldering that burden. Console cowboy Case will be played by Callum Turner, a British actor perhaps best known for being constitutionally unable to keep his hand off Dua Lipa's ass (who among us). In the flashier role of street samurai Molly Millions is Briana Middleton, an ethnically indeterminate American singer / actress who I assume was a fallback for FKA Twigs. Other notables include capable rent-a-villain Mark Strong as Armitage, homuncular young DiCaprio clone Dane Dehaan as Riviera, and Peter "not-a-Skarsgård" Sarsgaard as multi-centenarian John Ashpool. Excited yet?
Should the cast fall short, the show could always succeed on vibes alone, but those are also looking dire. Things could always be worse (Netflix), but they could've been a lot more interesting.
Previous, Quixotic Attempts to Adapt Neuromancer for the Screen, Ranked:
5. The Joseph Kahn Attempt (Early 2000s)
Gibson was a hot commodity in the post-Matrix cyber-haze of the early aughts, and a Neuromancer movie nearly got off the ground with music video veteran Joseph Kahn directing. Connoisseurs of trash may know Kahn from his debut feature Torque (2004), an overcranked attempt to do The Fast and the Furious with motorcycles, starring Ice Cube and a pre-Parks and Rec Adam Scott. The latter would've been inspired casting for Case, but the role was reportedly going to Hayden Christensen, hot off his acclaimed performance as a grooming victim in Attack of the Clones.
I mean, who knows? The storyboards above (by artist Dan Fraga) look wild, but not much like Neuromancer. The finished film likely would've landed on the gomi pile of visually striking, otherwise indefensible 2000s dross like Equilibrium, Ultraviolet, and Torque.
4. The Tim Miller Attempt (ca. 2017)
A Neuromancer movie from the director of Deadpool sounds like a lock for last place on this list, but Tim Miller is more interesting than his most famous credit would suggest. Putting Halt and Catch Fire's Mackenzie Davis in a Terminator sequel, creating Love, Death, & Robots, and designing the opening titles for Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo adds up to a solid cyberpunk résumé. His version of Neuromancer was maybe the furthest from ever happening, and it may well have been a fiasco. But at worst, Miller seems like a well-meaning, slightly dim guy striving towards cool-geek taste. Maybe I just see myself in him.
3. The Vincenzo Natali Attempt (Early 2010s)
Natali, the Canadian director of existentialist escape-room classic CUBE, has never quite delivered on his early promise. Once feted as the heir apparent to Cronenberg, he wound up getting lapped by the actual heir to Cronenberg. Like Richard Stanley, his reputation rests largely on movies he's almost made.
That being said, big fan. As is Gibson himself. Natali was instrumental in bringing the pretty good The Peripheral to the screen, and his work on the series suggests his Neuromancer might have halfway succeeded. Hiring Tsutomu Nihei to bang out some concept art (above) was a step in the right direction.
Less promising was Natali's screenplay. Though faithful to the events of the novel, it leans heavily on hard-boiled narration from Case, as though we learned nothing from Blade Runner: The Director's Cut.
More questionable still, the actor charged with selling the voiceover would've been Mark Wahlberg. (In fairness, I guess Boston is canonically part of the Sprawl).
2. The Cabana Boys Attempt (Late 80s)
Beautifully, the first crack at producing a Neuromancer movie came from a pair of enterprising SoCal stoners, after failing to shop a sequel to their favorite film, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Posing as Hollywood players from "Cabana Boy Productions", they managed to option the movie rights from Gibson, backed by a $100K investment from the socialite wife of a plastic surgeon. Before imploding spectacularly, their fledgling production roped in Buckaroo Banzai screenwriter Earl Mac Rauch and, inexplicably, psychedelic guru Timothy Leary (90 seconds into this sizzle reel, you can hear him repeatedly describe cyberpunk as "nitty gritty").
There was no real chance The Cabana Boys' Neuromancer would ever be made, but the vibes of an authentically 1980s adaptation would have been incredible, no matter how shoddy the production. And bonus points to the Boys for a misadventure so wildly Gibsonian in its own right, unfolding at a weird nexus of wealth, artifice. California drug culture, and emerging technology. Through Leary's involvement, their hustle even led to the eventual release of Interplay's Neuromancer computer game, originally intended as a movie tie-in.
1. The Chris Cunningham Attempt (Late 90s)
The inevitable top pick. Not much left to say about it. Jodorowsky's DUNE for Gen-Xers. The Aphex Twin soundtrack alone!
Gibson first met Cunningham in London, at the height of the director's Windowlicker heyday. The author came away convinced:
Chris is my own one-hundred-percent personal choice. My only choice. The only person I've met who I thought might have a hope in hell of doing it right.
The director himself was more circumspect:
I worry about it a lot. Sometimes I wake up and I think it could be the greatest science fiction movie ever made, but on other days, I just feel the whole project is pointless and it will never work.
Cunningham knew any Neuromancer movie made within the Hollywood machine could only be a compromise, and therefore a failure. He walked away from the project and into obscurity, rarely to be seen again. In doing so, he left behind a perfect artifact: the idea of Chris Cunningham's Neuromancer. Long after Apple's series has dissolved into the streaming ether, that idea will linger like the burn-in on a screen-- a vertiginous glimpse into a future that might’ve been, much like the novel itself.
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