The most revealing thing CD Projekt has said about its Cyberpunk movie is a refusal. The studio’s co-CEO has now put on the record what the film will not be, a retelling of the game, and has said nothing yet about what it will be. In the space between those two statements, some of the coverage has already started crossing names off a cast list that does not exist.

Michał Nowakowski’s words, given to the Polish business outlet PAP Biznes, are carefully narrow. “At this point, we can only say that we definitely don’t want to make a film adaptation of the game,” he said. “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.” A world instead of a plot: it is a decision about form, and the first public word from the studio on the film’s direction since Paramount’s involvement surfaced.

What Nowakowski said, and what he left out

Read the quote again and notice what is missing. There are no names in it. Nowakowski did not mention V, the protagonist the player shapes, or Johnny Silverhand, the role Keanu Reeves plays in Cyberpunk 2077. tbreak makes the point plainly: his comments name no characters. VGTimes nonetheless ran the news under a headline promising “an Original Story Without V or Johnny Silverhand,” an inference dressed as an announcement.

The accurate reading is narrower and less exciting. The game’s plot is off the table; its people have not been discussed in public at all. Anyone telling you that Reeves is in, or out, is guessing.

The anime that showed CD Projekt the way

The choice has a precedent, and Nowakowski cited it himself. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, the anime CD Projekt made with Studio Trigger for Netflix, set its own story in Night City instead of replaying the game. Its effect, in his telling, was commercial before it was anything else. “In 2022, when the first installment of the anime debuted, we observed increased interest in the game,” he said, and in the months that followed, “game sales continued to exceed those observed before its premiere.” Events of this kind, he added, “activate existing players and attract new recipients.”

That is the logic of the film, stated more frankly than studios usually allow. An adaptation competes with the game: it hands you the ending of something you could have played. A new story in the same city sends you back to it. There is a formal reason too. V is a choice the player makes, a face and a path assembled at the controls, and a film cannot cast that character without taking the choice away.

A world still waiting for its author

The difficulty is that Edgerunners worked as a funnel because it worked first as a series, made by an animation studio with a hand of its own. The Paramount film so far has a producer, Lorenzo di Bonaventura of the Transformers and G.I. Joe films, and no director, no writer and no cast. Paramount’s Call of Duty film, by comparison, already has Taylor Sheridan writing and Peter Berg directing. An original story inside a licensed world is the kind of film that lives or dies by who writes and shoots it. CD Projekt has chosen the form that most needs an author, and has yet to name one.

It is also the second attempt. CD Projekt signed a live-action deal in October 2023 with Anonymous Content, the company behind True Detective, Mr. Robot and The Revenant, and nothing reached the screen. Nowakowski’s account is matter-of-fact: “Our contract with Anonymous Content expired, and in the meantime, an opportunity arose to establish cooperation with Paramount Pictures,” and the company chose to make the project “in a new formula.” Wccftech reads a three-year term into that contract; CD Projekt has not said so.

What changes for players: nothing yet

For anyone playing the game, this news changes nothing. The next things carrying the Cyberpunk name will arrive long before any film: the second season of Edgerunners, a standalone 10-episode story with a new crew and an all-new voice cast, reaches Netflix on October 20, and the Cyberpunk trading card game launches on November 6. The film has no release date. Nowakowski is already applying the same plan to Project Hadar, the studio’s next new world, which he wants to “join the family of the two existing ones,” The Witcher and Cyberpunk.

CD Projekt has, in effect, described a film whose success will be measured in game sales. Whether it also earns its place as cinema depends on a director nobody has hired yet.

Tags: Paramount Pictures, video game adaptations, Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Michał Nowakowski