A more Edgerunners-esque original tale from Night City looks to be in the offing
Since the existence of plans for a Cyberpunk 2077 live-action adaptation from devs CD Projekt Red and Paramount Pictures was revealed last week, I've been hoping it won't take the form of porting V's tale from the game to the big screen. Such a thing wouldn't necessarily be terrible, but I like my game adaptations a bit more on the original story side of things, as Cyberpunk tie-in anime series Edgerunners has been. The good news is that one of CD Projekt Red's big bosses has now confirmed that this adaptation won't be beat-for-beat retelling of 'Honey, there's a Keanu in my brain'.
There is a caveat in that the interview in question with CDPR joint-CEO Michał Nowakowski has been conducted and printed in Polish by business site PAP Biznes. A machine translation of the article suggests the exec said the following about the Cyberpunk movie:
"Our contract with Anonymous Content expired, and in the meantime, an opportunity arose to establish cooperation with Paramount Pictures, and we decided that we would conduct a live-action Cyberpunk project in a new formula. At this point, we can only say that we definitely don't want to make a film adaptation of the game. 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."
Wary of relying solely on machine-translated quotes given they can result in meanings being twisted or made misinterpretable, we've run the quote by a Polish contact in order to try and root out any potential muddling of Nowakowski's words by the auto-translation. I've also reached out to CD Projekt Red for comment.
In a previous statement at the time the movie plans we confirmed, all Nowakowski said was that the studio are "excited about Paramount as a future partner who shares our creative ambitions for the Cyberpunk franchise" and would share more info on the film "at the appropriate time".
Assuming the movie does go the Edgerunners-esque route of telling a Night City story separate from the game's tale, that's definitely the right move in my eyes. Not only would that mean its creators don't have to agonise over how to make the pacing of an open-world game mesh with a film's runtime and could avoid having to decide how square messing with players' preferred headcanons about what V did or didn't do at various points, but it gives the creatives behind the film a chance to offer a fresher tale that perhaps explores some elements of the Cyberpunk world that the game didn't give as much attention to.
Then again, to avoid earning my ire, you've also got to avoid falling into the Fallout Season 2 trap of telling a fresh tale, but being desperate to hammer as many references to a game in as possible without conclusively advancing its setting in a way that makes the events of said game feel as meaningful it should. Basically, I'm saying I might be a bit too picky to be the ideal person to be trying to please with a game adaptation for the big screen.