Cyberpunk on Netflix: Richard K. Morgan's Hardboiled Classic 'Altered Carbon' Gets Series

In a new attempt to expand their already impressive pack of original content, Netflix has just given the go to a new cyberpunk series. Richard K. Morgan's 2002 hardboiled dystopian classic, Altered Carbon, will be coming to the streaming site with a ten-episode order in a project that has been years in the making.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the streaming website-turned-production studio just officially approved a straight-to-series order for 10 episodes based on the novel, which is set in the 25th century. The story explores what happens to human minds when it becomes digitalized and can be transferred through different bodies. The main role, still uncast, is Takesi Kovacs, a former interstellar warrior who has been behind bars for five centuries.

Behind the show will be Shutter Island and Terminator Genysis screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis, who acquired the rights to adapt the film years ago and had been trying to sell a screenplay for a movie based on the novel for years until Netflix finally came along and changed the format into a series. For the series version, she'll be writing the screenplay and serve as executive producer and showrunner.

"Altered Carbon is one of the most seminal pieces of post-cyberpunk hard science fiction out there – a dark, complex noir story that challenges our ideas of what it means to be human when all information becomes encodable, including the human mind," said Kalogridis when she first acquired rights to the book, Deadline reports.

The show will be co-produced by Skydance Productions, as the company extends its relationship with Netflix after last year's dramedy, Grace and Frankie.

Last year, another beloved dystopian story became an online series, when Amazon Studios released the first season of The Man in the High Castle, a show based on Philip K. Dick's novel of the same name about a world in which the Axis Powers (Germany, Japan and Italy) won World War II.