Sci-fi cinema has taken us to many weird, wonderful, and tech-suffused worlds over the years — from the dust-strewn, neon-lit Los Angeles of Blade Runner (and its 2049 and 2099 follow-ups) to The Matrix‘s Mega City, Akira‘s Neo-Tokyo, and RoboCop‘s gritty, industrial Detroit. And soon, we’ll be punching our ticket and hopping on the metro to add Night City to that list, as Deadline is reporting that CD Projekt Red’s bestselling RPG Cyberpunk 2077 is gearing up to receive the blockbuster video game adaptation treatment at Paramount, with Transformers franchise mainstay Lorenzo Di Bonaventura attached to produce.
According to Deadline, Paramount’s movie — which will join the likes of Sonic The Hedgehog, Halo, and the upcoming Street Fighter and Call Of Duty movies in the studio’s game-to-screen stable — will be “a live-action film set in the Cyberpunk 2077 universe”. As such, it sounds as if the project, which currently has no director or screenwriter attached, will be free to diverge from — or at least not directly adapt — CD Projekt Red’s game. For those unfamiliar with said game, the plot broadly follows reluctantly biochip-enhanced mercenary V and their fight to take down nefarious Night City overlords the Asaka Corporation before their consciousness is fully overwritten by legendary rockstar/terrorist Johnny Silverhand… who just so happens to be played in the game by actual legendary rockstar, actor, and not-terrorist Keanu Reeves. As for where Paramount’s Cyberpunk will head, the possibilities are pretty much endless. Heck, for all we know, maybe Idris Elba’s charisma cannon of a government agent Solomon Reed, first introduced in the game’s very popular Phantom Liberty expansion, might even make an appearance.
Given the previous success of Cyberpunk’s anime offshoot, Edgerunners, along with the eye-catching aesthetic, epic sprawl and scope, and timely thematic concerns explored within the Cyberpunk universe, the prospect of seeing that world realised on the big screen — especially amid a new era of peak game-to-screen adaptations — is a tantalising one, indeed. The campaign for Keanu Reeves to reprise Johnny Silverhand in the movie starts here, friends. Grab your iron… let’s mobilise!
