‘Deadpool’ Director Tim Miller Is Helming the Adaptation of Cyberpunk Bible ‘Neuromancer’

Hackers are so hot right now. Whether it’s The Matrix or Michael Mann, none can resist the siren call of the cyberpunk era, where people’s sunglasses were too dark, jackets too long, and virtual reality is the true final frontier. Good news, console cowboys: William Gibson’s cyberpunk tome Neuromancer is finally being adapted into a movie, and Deadpool director Tim Miller is at the helm.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Miller will direct the adaptation of the 1984 book for 20th Century Fox, and it’ll be produced by the X-Men franchise’s Simon Kinberg. It’s a little weird that the book hasn’t yet been made into a movie, as William Gibson is essentially the granddaddy of modern cyberpunk sci-fi. Neuromancer launched Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy, which focuses on a future dominated by technology, corporations, and artificial intelligence.

Neuromancer is the story of Henry Dorsett Case, a disgraced hacker (can you imagine), who’s been locked out of “The Matrix,” a worldwide virtual reality network, as punishment for attempting to steal from a former boss. He gets one final chance to re-join the network when he’s employed to hack into a A.I. satellite orbiting Earth.

A movie has been in development for what seems like forever, with Mark Wahlberg and Liam Neeson at one point circling roles. It’s unlikely that they’re still in the running, since it’s been a while, so Fox ought to start racking up a new cast list soon. This is the O.G. cyberpunk sci-fi, essentially the Bible for everything that came after it that involved computers, hackers, corporate dystopias, and people in cool outfits bypassing firewalls to upload the nanovirus into the mainframe.