William Gibson, the console cowboy behind Neuromancer, jacked in to defend the trailer for an upcoming Apple TV adaptation of his landmark novel over the weekend. Debuting at San Diego Comic-Con, the trailer for Apple TV’s version of Case’s cyberspace adventures was the subject of much debate on social media, with some of the world’s most prolific microbloggers attempting to determine whether the minute-and-a-half clip was “cooking” or “cooked.” Gibson, who published Neuromancer in 1984, is firmly in camp “cooking.”
On Saturday, Gibson shared the trailer on Bluesky, the argument app, where he was met with divisive responses. Nevertheless, Gibson, whose work is rarely adapted to film, is a fan of what Tim Cook and the rest of the imagineers at Apple are up to. “Anyone who doesn’t see how very satisfied I’ve been throughout production doesn’t get what I most want out of an adaptatation [sic],” Gibson wrote in what has to be the nicest thing ever written about an upcoming Callum Turner vehicle. “Mind you, that does tend to happen.”
It must be somewhat ironic for Gibson that the adaptation comes from a tech company seeking control of how every person on Earth connects to the internet. Though it’s not like he’s shied away in the past. In 2022, Prime Video released an eight-episode version of The Peripheral starring Chloë Grace Moretz and executive produced by Vincenzo Natali (Hannibal), who became friends with Gibson. “I’ve read some of his adaptations of his own work and he changes it radically,” Natali told SyFy in 2022. “He loves what Jonathan [Nolan] and Lisa [Joy] have done, and we’ve had this long-standing relationship, so I think he had a lot of confidence in the group. But never was possessive. If anything, he was inspiring and threw some of the more interesting new ideas that are not in the books at us that eventually were incorporated in the show.”
Nevertheless, Gibson’s recent evaluation strikes a different tone from his comments in 2024, when he announced on X that he wouldn’t be taking questions on Apple’s adaptation because he’s too busy answering the production’s questions and slightly distanced himself from the changes. “I answer showrunner’s and director’s questions about the source material. I read drafts and make suggestions,” he wrote. “And that’s it, really, though my previous experience has been that that winds up being quite a lot of work in itself.”
“I don’t have veto power. The showrunner and director do, because the adaptation’s their creation, not mine. A novel is a solitary creation. An adaptation is a fundamentally collaborative creation, so first of all isn’t going to ‘be the book’. Particularly not the one you saw behind your forehead when you read the book, because that one is yours alone. So for now let’s leave it at that.”
The Neuromancer series was created by Dark Winds and Jack Ryan‘s Graham Roland and J.D. Dillard, director of the Korean War fighter-pilot drama Devotion. The series stars Dua Lipa’s husband as Case, Briana Middleton as Molly, Peter Sarsgaard as John Ashpool, and André De Shields as Julius Deane. The series premieres on January 22, 2027, on Apple TV.
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