Home Entertainment First trailer for Netflix’s big-budget cyberpunk adaptation Altered Carbon lands

First trailer for Netflix’s big-budget cyberpunk adaptation Altered Carbon lands

2 min read
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I’ve said it before, and I will say it again, all hail Netflix, our new benevolent masters. The platform has been churning out top quality shows at a phenomenal rate. Most recently their brilliant Godless had me glued to my screen for an entire day as I binge-watched the hell out of the show. Of course, that’s a ‘period piece’, not science fiction. Richard K. Morgan’s acclaimed award-winning 2002 novel Altered Carbon, however, is! And judging by the trailer the ten-part series adaptation is going to be something to behold!

Altered Carbon is apparently Netflix’s most expensive series to date, and you can see that in the short trailer. I’m getting big impressions of Blade Runner from this, although that may be because I am currently listening to the Blade Runner 2049 soundtrack. And it looks serious, like heavy serious, – and it’s also got lots of naked! The series is R-rated after all and is distinctly noir in nature (Blade Runner!). Altered Carbon is set more than 300 years in the future, in a time where people can simply upload their consciousness (via something called a stack) into ‘sleeves’ (new bodies) when they die. Regular stack backups and a waiting supply of sleeves mean that the wealthy can be practically immortal.

The series focuses on a Takeshi Kovacs, a PI who is hired by one of these long-lived rich folk named Laurens Bancroft to investigate his own suicide. Bancroft died between stack backups, meaning his new body has no memory of it, but he believes he was actually murdered. Thanks to the whole sleeving thing, Kovacs is actually played by two people in Joel Kinnaman (Suicide Squad) and Will Yun Lee (The Wolverine). Why two you ask? Well, there are flashbacks to when Kovacs was an Envoy (think intergalactic Special Forces from the future). Popular actor James Purefoy (The Following) stars as Bancroft.

With writer-producer Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island, Avatar) running things and the pilot directed by Game of Thrones director Miguel Sapochnik (of the awesome “Battle of the Bastards” and “Winds of Winter” episodes fame) taking charge of the pilot, I think we can expect great things. Just feast your eyes on the below images via Entertainment Witness

Altered Carbon is set to blow our minds on 2 February 2018.

Last Updated: December 5, 2017

8 Comments

  1. Original Heretic

    December 5, 2017 at 11:37

    Awesome. Something to look forward to.
    And now Netflix, give us an Ender’s Shadow series!!!!

    Reply

    • Guz

      December 5, 2017 at 12:36

      Did you read the series? would really love it if they did one about Bean and his special forces team

      Reply

      • Original Heretic

        December 5, 2017 at 12:49

        I’d love to see the whole damn series.
        Peter’s story was just as amazing.
        That part where his parents come in and say to him,” We just want you know, we’re so very proud of you.”
        Then once they go, he breaks down and cries.

        I still get chills.
        A sign of a great writer, taking a character that people hate and turning him into one that people love.

        Reply

        • Guz

          December 5, 2017 at 13:56

          He did go from torturing little animals to saving the world from itself, agreed love me a redemption story

          Reply

          • Original Heretic

            December 5, 2017 at 14:06

            It was the reasoning behind his brutish/savage behaviour that I also loved.
            [BOOK SPOILERS INCOMING]
            [you have been warned, those who look here now]

            It was the reveal that Peter wasn’t chosen for the program, not because he was too violent, but because he wasn’t violent/aggressive enough. I mean, as a reader, HOW DID WE NOT SEE THAT SOONER?!? You see Ender kill a kid when he’s, what, 5 years old? And then later again, at Battle School, he does it again. Of course he was the most vicious of them!

            The only reason Peter tortured little animals (and there was actually only one incident like this that we know of for sure, there is no other mention of it again) was that he was trying to harden himself, trying to make himself more suitable. He knew he was soft, so he overcompensated. He was genius enough to figure that out.

            All the hatred that we ever feel for Peter is purely due to Ender’s perception of him. His older brother, the bully. Who only bullied him because he was jealous.
            Even in the original book, the work Peter does is actually for the good of mankind. Though others may have seen it as being selfish, it was some amazing stuff. The whole Locke/Demosthenes thing, wow, I was so disappointed when they cut that out of the movie completely.

  2. Gavin Mannion

    December 6, 2017 at 14:17

    This is looking awesome… bring on this tech please

    Reply

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