'The Peripheral' Amazon Series, Based On William Gibson's Novel, Casts Chloë Grace Moretz

Amazon's series adaptation of William Gibson's The Peripheral has found its star: Chloë Grace Moretz. Moretz will play "a woman trying to hold together the pieces of her broken family in a forgotten corner of tomorrow's America." Gibson's The Peripheral is the first entry in The Jackpot Trilogy Series, with the second book in the series – Agency – having been published in January of this year.

Variety has the scoop on The Peripheral casting Chloë Grace Moretz as its lead. The series comes from writer, executive producer, and co-showrunner Scott B. Smith, with Greg Plageman serving as executive producer and co-showrunner. Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy will also executive produce as part of the big deal they signed with Amazon in 2019. Splice filmmaker Vincenzo Natali will direct and executive produce.

Here's the somewhat wordy synopsis for The Peripheral book:

Flynne Fisher lives down a country road, in a rural America where jobs are scarce, unless you count illegal drug manufacture, which she's trying to avoid. Her brother Burton lives on money from the Veterans Administration, for neurological damage suffered in the Marines' elite Haptic Recon unit. Flynne earns what she can by assembling product at the local 3D printshop. She made more as a combat scout in an online game, playing for a rich man, but she's had to let the shooter games go.

Wilf Netherton lives in London, seventy-some years later, on the far side of decades of slow-motion apocalypse. Things are pretty good now, for the haves, and there aren't many have-nots left. Wilf, a high-powered publicist and celebrity-minder, fancies himself a romantic misfit, in a society where reaching into the past is just another hobby.

Burton's been moonlighting online, secretly working security in some game prototype, a virtual world that looks vaguely like London, but a lot weirder. He's got Flynne taking over shifts, promised her the game's not a shooter. Still, the crime she witnesses there is plenty bad.

Flynne and Wilf are about to meet one another. Her world will be altered utterly, irrevocably, and Wilf's, for all its decadence and power, will learn that some of these third-world types from the past can be badass.

William Gibson is a legend, having given birth to the cyberpunk subgenre, so any new series adapted from something he wrote is bound to get attention. Amazon greenlit the series adaptation back in 2019, with Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon Studios, saying: "This story calls for a masterful level of talent to bring acclaimed author William Gibson's science fiction thriller to life. We are excited to partner with Warner Bros. Television, Oscar-nominated writer Scott B. Smith and Vincenzo Natali in bringing this fantastic new series to our global Prime Video customers."