Skip to main content

Deadpool’s Tim Miller is set to direct the Neuromancer movie

Deadpool’s Tim Miller is set to direct the Neuromancer movie

/

A long time coming

Share this story

Deadpool

William Gibson’s Neuromancer is one of the best-known works of cyberpunk, and has helped influence countless films, from The Matrix to Ghost in the Shell. According to Deadline, Deadpool director Tim Miller is now signed to direct a film adaptation for Fox, with X-Men franchise architect Simon Kinberg set to produce.

Miller and Kinberg seems like an ideal pairing to take on the film. Neuromancer is a famously gritty cyberpunk thriller, and Miller’s direction with Deadpool shows that he’s certainly capable of delivering the sort of stylistic take Gibson’s world deserves. Kinberg, on the other hand, is a go-to favorite for Fox, having written and overseen the latest run of X-Men films. (Miller has also been attached to a potential reboot of James Cameron’s Terminator franchise, but it’s not clear when or if that will happen.)

Gibson published Neuromancer in 1984, which follows a former hacker named Henry Dorsett Case, who lives in Chiba City, Japan. Poisoned by a former employer, Case finds himself unable to enter the novel’s virtual world, known as the “Matrix.” But then an ex-military officer approaches him with an offer he can’t refuse: hack a massive AI in orbit, and he’ll cure Case.

Neuromancer Cover

The novel helped establish Gibson as one of the genre’s best writers, and has been particularly influential for not only setting the tone of gritty, cyberpunk dystopias, but also popularizing the term “cyberspace” itself. Neuromancer has long been a target for adaptation, but has never made it before cameras: Torque director Joseph Kahn was in line to direct in 2007, while Cube and Splice director Vincenzo Natali was later attached to the project.