Apple TV+'s 'Neuromancer' Marks Start of Filming

Six years after its 2019 launch, Apple TV+ is finally having the breakout year it's needed since Ted Lasso became a pandemic-era darling. Severance's return (and multiple ways to stream Season 1 for free) resulted in a surge of signups, closing the embarrassing gap between the iPhone maker's streaming subscribers and the rest of the field. In theaters, after a string of high-profile flops, F1 is poised... well, not to turn a profit, but it's putting up respectable numbers in its wide release. Now, with the announcement that Neuromancer is filming, the question is whether Apple TV+ can stop trying to be what it thinks prestige TV looks like and just make watchable shows.

Like Amazon and Netflix, Apple has had a steep learning curve since entering the TV production business, the difference being that those two media distributors had a five-year head start, and got their embarrassing attempts at making "prestige shows" without asking themselves if the show was watchable out of their systems in the early 2010s. (Remember The Man in The High Castle? Marco Polo?) 

Apple, unfortunately, did it while everyone was home during the pandemic, with godawful series like See. It also insisted on doing the Game of Thrones "adapting the unadaptable by sheer force of money" by making the first ever adaptation of Isaac Asimov's 1951 novel Foundation. The show is still going (Season 3 arrives July 17, 2025), but the trailer doesn't make a lick of sense and the show is dull as dishwater. Whether or not Neuromancer will be another in this vein remains to be seen, but the 1984 novel has also never successfully been adapted for the screen, for much the same reason as Foundation. 

Hopefully, this time, Apple will at least remember to make the show worth watching. And maybe consider that just because you can, doesn't always mean you should.

Here's the series synopsis:

Neuromancer follows a damaged, top-rung super-hacker named Case, who is thrust into a web of digital espionage and high stakes crime with his partner Molly, a razor-girl assassin with mirrored eyes, aiming to pull a heist on a corporate dynasty with untold secrets.

British actor Callum Turner (The Capture) leads the series as Gibson's famous hacker Chase, co-starring with American Brianna Middleton (The Inheritance) as Molly. The rest of the ensemble is similarly a mix of European and American talent, including British actors Mark Strong (Nine Perfect Strangers), Emma Laird (A Haunting in Venice), Max Irons (Young Sherlock), American actors Joseph Lee (Star Trek: Picard), Dane DeHaan (Oppenheimer), Peter Sarsgaard (The Lost Daughter), André De Shields (Life on Mars), Marc Menchaca (Black Mirror), and French actor Clémence Poésy (The Essex Serpent),

Graham Roland (Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan) and JD Dillard (The Outsider) are creating the series for television. It is a co-production between Skydance Television, Anonymous Content, and Apple Studios. Drake’s DreamCrew Entertainment will also produce it. Roland will serve as showrunner, and Dillard will direct the pilot episode. The two also executive produce alongside Gibson, Zack Hayden, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg & Matt Thunell for Skydance Television, and Drake, Adel ‘Future’ Nur & Jason Shrier for DreamCrew; 

Neuromancer is currently filming and is expected to debut on Apple TV+ in 2026.