CD Projekt Red has finally spoken up about the live-action Cyberpunk 2077 movie. The company said it doesn’t want to do a 1:1 adaptation of the game, instead telling a new story within the same universe.
“At this point, we can only say that we definitely don’t want to make a film adaptation of the game,” co-CEO Michał Nowakowski told Polish outlet PAP Biznes, via GamesRadar. “We want to tell a story in the world of Cyberpunk, but it won’t be a one-to-one translation of the game’s story.”
The Cyberpunk movie is being created in partnership with Parmount, now under the Skydance banner after the recent merger. The film will be produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura, of live-action Transformers fame.
It’ll be interesting to see how far the movie strays from the game, which featured a freelance mercenary called V who put a mysterious computer chip in their brain and ended up haunted by the digital ghost of Keanu Reeves’ Johnny Silverhand. I’d personally love them to go back, get Reeves back in, and tell Silverhand’s story before he ended up stuck in a chip.
Of course, the Cyberpunk universe — created by tabletop RPG designer Mike Pondsmith — is wide enough to tell a range of original stories. It’s fertile soil for pulling at themes of identity, autonomy, and the self as a ship of theseus to be modified and reprinted.
It sounds like a similar approach the company took to anime. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners feels like a faithful multimedia project within the world CDPR created — featuring locations and characters from the game world — but it tells a fresh story about original characters in its dystopian posthuman hellscape.
The Studio Trigger-led anime series is back on Netflix this month when Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Season 2 launches on October 20. Check out the IGN interview with the creators of Edgerunners for the lowdown.
CD Projekt also recently announced that work has officially begun on Project Hadar, its first game in its own original universe. The company has previously only played in the worlds of others, with The Witcher based on novels and Cyberpunk based on a tabletop RPG.
Elsewhere in CD Project Land, The Witcher 3 just got a remaster on consoles and PC, which saw the iconic RPG get a makeover. There were some issues with the new visuals, particularly heavy bloom in The Witcher 3 remaster, but CDPR was on the case quickly. And of course, Cyberpunk 2 is in the works, although it feels years away.