Watch: Netflix’s new cyberpunk show Altered Carbon follows in the vein of Jessica Jones, Daredevil

Netflix has unveiled the teaser for their upcoming science fiction original web series Altered Carbon. Based on a hardboiled cyberpunk novel by Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon is set in a futuristic dystopian society where humans have achieved the luxury of never dying. The plot revolves around a solider who has been brought back to life to investigate the murder of an extremely wealthy man. The show will begin streaming on February 2nd, 2018. [caption id=“attachment_4243581” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  A still from Altered Carbon. Image from Twitter/@JoelKinnamanFan[/caption] In this dystopian society set 300 years into the future, humans have figured out a way to transfer their consciousness and memories into what is basically a memory card called a ‘stack’. The human body is nothing more than clothes, and you can transfer yourself from one ‘sleeve’ to another. This luxury is available to the wealthiest who can easily afford go on shifting their awareness, thus beating death in the process. Watch the trailer below.

The series follows a solider named Takeshi Kovacs — played by Will Yun Lee and Joel Kinnaman — who is the last survivor of an elite group of interstellar warriors who were defeated in an uprising against the new world order. Kovacs’ mind was imprisoned for centuries until a wealthy man named Laurens Bancroft, played by James Purefoy,  offers him the chance to live again on one condition: Help solve the murder of Bancroft himself. This is the first real effort to bring the cyberpunk genre to a mainstream audience. Netflix ordered Richard K. Morgan’s classic novel to be turned into a web series in early 2016. Laeta Kalogridis, co-writer of Avatar and Terminator Genisys, is the executive producer and showrunner for Altered Carbon. The show’s pilot episode will be directed by Game of Thrones’ favorite director, Miguel Sapochnik. In addition to cyberpunk, Altered Carbon is also a noir drama, which has been Netflix’s prime choice lately with successes like Jessica Jones and Daredevil and Sense8. Science fiction was a major genre which Netflix was missing from its portfolio. With Altered Carbon, the landscape would change as the show crosses across multiple genres. The teaser projects the show as a well thought out commentary on social structure and distribution of wealth and power in a society. It presents a dystopian world where human beings have finally found a way around death, but the ones who can truly beat it are those with money.