Cyberpunk 2077 live-action movie leaves fans divided

Talk of a live-action adaptation of Cyberpunk 2077 has been a popular topic over the past couple of days, following a comment from a recent interview with one of the game’s stars.

While the idea has been relatively popular with CD Projekt RED’s fans, nobody can seem to agree on what exactly the fanbase would like to see out of said adaptation.

In case you missed it, Screen Rant recently sat down with Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty star Idris Elba to talk all things Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

Naturally, interviewer Joe Deckelmeier took the opportunity to ask about the possibility of a Cyberpunk 2077 live-action project in the future.

“Oh, man, that's a great question,” Elba told Screen Rant, “I think if any film could do a live-action rendition, it could be [Cyberpunk 2077], and I think [Keanu Reeves’] character and my character together would be, "Whoa." So, let's speak that into existence.”

Over in a thread on the r/cyberpunkgame subreddit, fans discussed how they’d like to see Keanu and Elba reunite in a potential Cyberpunk 2077 adaptation.

“Only if they put the Writers of the Game in charge of the movie,” commented user Jefafa326, “but they never do that.”

“It already plays as a movie and would work better as a television show,” replied user From_Graves.

Quite a large chunk of the commenters share From_Grave's sentiment and would rather see the franchise adapted into a series rather than a film.

However as one commenter pointed out, there are a lot of reasons why a Cyberpunk 2077 TV series might not work.

“Budgets are not big enough for a world like this in a TV show,” replied user Toast5480, “It would require too much CGI that any producer would avoid, we would end up with a plain night city and shots purposely filmed to avoid showing off everything that makes night city amazing…”

“I don't think a tv shows budget would do cyberpunk justice, plus i don't think keanu would ever commit to a TV show, so we'd end up with someone else and it wouldn't be the same at all.”

I’m inclined to agree. Spreading a budget across a series rather than a film could make things look a little cheap, mostly because of how expensive it would be to produce the CGI for a sprawling sci-fi megacity.

Here’s hoping a studio would be willing to give said project a massive budget regardless.