Netflix Goes Cyberpunk in the Best Way Possible With Altered Carbon
Not long after the release of Bright, one of Netflix's most significant forays into big-budget feature-length filmmaking, the streaming service and entertainment giant is coming out with a similarly ambitious original series called Altered Carbon.
Based on a cyberpunk noir novel of the same name by Richard K. Morgan (who, it so happens, also wrote the video game Crysis 2), Altered Carbon imagines a world where consciousness can be contained in tiny discs and transferred into other bodies, effectively allowing people to live forever.
It’s looking very much like another big step for the cyberpunk genre, which was recently championed by Blade Runner 2049, and will likely go for another win with Black Panther in 2018. Consider also Alita: Battle Angel and the video game Cyberpunk 2077 by Witcher developer CD Projekt Red, which are also set to come out next year. The genre really seems poised to take over the zeitgeist.
Netflix has more recently released a featurette to explain the premise of Altered Carbon:
The series stars Joel Kinnaman (Rick Flag from Suicide Squad, and RoboCop from 2014’s very regrettable RoboCop), and has Laeta Kalogridis (who’s worked on Avatar, Shutter Island, and Terminator Genisys) at the helm as creator, screenwriter, and executive producer.
But the most exciting billing yet belongs to the director of the series’ pilot episode (as reported by Entertainment Weekly): Miguel Sapochnik, the set piece mastermind behind Game of Thrones’ “Battle of The Bastards” and “Hardhome.” With hope that he can bring to Altered Carbon the same masterful filmmaking that we saw in those two GoT episodes, we’re on board.
