The future arrives in the teaser for Apple's Neuromancer series

San Diego Comic Con has wrapped up and amidst the deluge of trailers and announcements came a first look at one of my more anticipated adaptations: AppleTV's take on William Gibson's classic cyberpunk novel Neuromancer.

The trailer shows off a dystopian future that Gibson depicted in the novel, and introduces us to a hacker named Case (Callum Turner) and Molly Millions (Briana Middleton), a cybernetic mercenary as the former is recruited for some sort of project.

These first trailers are almost always there to telegraph the vibes of a film or television series, and I have to say, I'm really liking what I'm seeing. There's a tendency for cyberpunk to ape the look and feel of something like Ridley Scott's Blade Runner – grim, tinted, and dark and something that Gibson realized while writing his novel was pretty similar to the tone that he was going for – and this doesn't feel like that at all. The world looks bright and sterile, modern and retro at the same time, but with enough neon and crowded cityscapes to still feel like cyberpunk.

The novel follows Case when he's hired for a data heist: he was a legendary console cowboy who had been caught and crippled after he tried to steal from a former employer, and he couldn't access The Matrix (this world's version of an immersive cyberspace system) as a result. He's hired by a mysterious officer named Armitage and his associate Molly, with an intriguing job offer: if he'll help them, he'll be fixed and allowed to get back into cyberspace. His initial task is to steal a data module, and as he gets deeper and deeper into the plot, Case finds out more about Armitage's past, and what his real intentions are.

It's hard to overstate just how important Neuromancer is to the science fiction canon and pop culture at large: it's an enormously influential text, informing everything from The Matrix to the larger cyberpunk movement, and widely envisioned many of the things that we see in our online and hyper-capitalistic world that we live in today. It's fitting – and maybe a little ironic – that the novel's now getting an adaptation from one of the biggest tech companies in the world.

Apple announced the show back in 2024: a ten-episode adaptation of the classic novel, created by Graham Roland (Dark Winds, Jack Ryan) and J.D. Dillard (Devotion). It's the first time the book is being adapted for the screen (there has been a video game, radio, and comic adaptation), with some attempts over the years from carious directors including Joseph Kahn, Vincenzo Natali, and Tim Miller.

Hopefully, this adaptation will live up to the novel's legacy. The series will begin streaming on January 22nd, 2027.