There’s good news for fans of William Gibson’s fictional AI Neuromancer and Wednesday, the ongoing tales of Charles Addams’ creepy and kooky family. Both shows’ already impressive casts have just announced some equally impressive new additions.
First up, BAFTA award-nominated Callum Turner from Masters of the Air and The Boys in the Boat is going to be appearing in Neuromancer. Based on Gibson’s book of the same name, it’s a 10-part Apple TV Plus series following a largely broken top-tier hacker called Case (Turner). Case stumbles into a tangled web of electronic espionage and corporate skulduggery with suitably thrilling results, and the source novel won stacks of literary awards and helped define what would come to be known as cyberpunk.
I’ve got high hopes for this one. I loved Gibson’s books but despite Keanu Reeve’s best efforts in Johhny Mnemonic, which was based on one of Gibson’s short stories, he’s proved hard to adapt well. This new series is coming from the same production company as Foundation, so the omens here are very good indeed.
See you next Wednesday
Every new casting announcement for Wednesday season two is an exciting one, and fresh from the revelation that Steve Buscemi would be appearing in the second season of the Netflix show we have another massive name: Thandiwe Newton. Best known for her Emmy-winning role in Westword, Newton was also great in movies such as Crash, Beloved and The Pursuit of Happyness.
The casting news comes via Variety, which has the exclusive – but unfortunately Variety’s sources don’t yet know any more details. And that’s true of season two more widely. As Variety says: “Few details are available about the new season of Wednesday, aside from the fact Jenna Ortega will return as the titular Addams Family daughter going through her teenage years.” The show is one of Netflix’s biggest ever hits and racked up an incredible 12 Emmy nominations, of which it won four – so you can see why Netflix managing to attract such big-name talent for the second season.
Both Neuromancer and season two of Wednesday are expected to stream this year, although there’s no news of a streaming date for either show just yet.