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Murderbot coming from Apple +

Shanejayell

Shanejayell

Yuri Fan without a Pause
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Murderbot, adapted from Martha Wells Murderbot Diaries, is coming to TV.

deadline.com

Alexander Skarsgård Stars In ‘Murderbot’ Sci-Fi Series Ordered By Apple From Chris & Paul Weitz

Apple TV+ has officially picked up Murderbot, a 10-episode sci-fi drama series starring and executive produced by Emmy winner Alexander Skarsgård (Succession). Based on Martha Wells’ bestsell…
deadline.com deadline.com

Apple TV+ has officially picked up Murderbot, a 10-episode sci-fi drama series starring and executive produced by Emmy winner Alexander Skarsgård (Succession). Based on Martha Wells' bestselling Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning book series The Murderbot Diaries, the project hails from Chris and Paul Weitz (About a Boy) and Paramount Television Studios.
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I do wonder HOW they'll adapt it, since the books all follow Murderbot's sarcastic thoughts, mostly....
 
Alexander Skarsgard is an extremely talented actor, and his work on MUTE showed he could handle the intensity of the character.

I'm wondering how you do the story in 10 episodes. Murderbot's walkabout that made up the original run of short stories would be about half that.
 
My biggest concern is that Murderbot is an agender, asexual entity and Skarsgard is a very masculine sex-icon. I identify very strongly with Murderbot. I do not identify strongly with hulking Scandinavean Ubermensch, even if they are great actors. It would have been nice if they had cast an Enby or even anyone who could conceivably pull off androgyny, but instead they're just going to make Murderbot a big, strong, blonde haired, blue-eyed man.

I'll be pleasantly surprised if that's not what ends up happening, but this is an extremely unfortuitous beginning in my view.
 
Shanejayell said:
......... It's a corporate security bot. They've never been described as slim or enby or twinky.
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They are though? In the scene where ART is modifying their body they certainly don't come across as a 6+ foot norse viking. More to the point though they are explicitly agender. Skarsgard is great, True Blood had a big impact on me in my formative years, but he's also a huge muscley dude. Murderbot is nondescript. They blend in, by design. Skarsgard has never blended into any crowd, anywhere. Like, there's not a lot of physical description of Murderbot, by design, and going with such a physically striking (and again, hyper-masculine in terms of his roles in US productions at least) actor seems like a misreading of that design.

I don't think this is literally the worst thing that could ever happen, but it does indicate that the showrunners have a strikingly different vision of what Murderbot looks, acts, and sounds like than I do, and based solely on this single data point, I'm not optimistic that theirs is going to be one I'm interested in watching.
 
Honestly I think you're confusing your mental image vs what's in the text.

Admittedly, we all do that, and it'd totally fair if this actor doesn't work for you.
 
Shanejayell said:
Honestly I think you're confusing your mental image vs what's in the text.

Admittedly, we all do that, and it'd totally fair if this actor doesn't work for you.
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No? Like I said, there isn't very much actual description of MB in the text, but what we do get is very much not a 6+ foot tall aryan demigod. Like, my 'headcanon' for what MB looks like is broad enough to encompass a whole lot of potential actors, but Skarsgard seems a particularly poor fit. Murderbot isn't Master Chief or a Space Marine. Those kinds of Constructs do exist within the setting, and they aren't one of them.

The fact that MB is agender is just so overwhelmingly supported by the text that I'm not sure how it's possible to take any other reading. They don't use personal pronouns and insist to everyone that they aren't a person. They don't exist anywhere on the gender spectrum and they don't possess a physical sex.

Is it too much to ask that the few successful characters who are actually written to be something other than straight, white men be portrayed that way in adaptations? Like, the only other explicitly agender character on TV that I can think of is Janet from the Good Place (Not a Girl).

Frankly I would be happy if they just picked an even vaguely normal looking person rather than a man who looks like he was born to pose for expensive cologne ads in the kind of magazines that make your spinster aunt get the vapors.
 
I'll admit, my Murderbot headcanon always looked like a stock photo or one of those "we amalgamated the photographs of the entire population of the US and this is what the average person looked like" photos, minus hair and eyebrows before meeting ART. Or it looks like AotC Tamuera Morrison because it's really impossible for me to separate Murderbot from the Star Wars clonetroopers in my mind. Something about Wet Droids made for violence.

That being said, my main association with Alexander Skarsgard is Generation Kill, and his character from that show what the exact sort of "I have definitely shut off my emotions because I live in a nightmare, this will have no consequences" vibe Murderbot gives off. I'm willing to give him the benefit of doubt.

The fandom is upset, and aren't wrong to be. The gender politics of Murderbot Diaries are one of the reasons the book has such a large queer audience, and casting a Viking ubermensch in the role of Murderbot was going to detract from the queerness no matter what. I just feel a little more willing to wait and see because saying an adaptation is ruined before we've seen any footage is asking for no future chances on stories that are important to me.
 
With traditional heroes it's "put a chick in it, make her lame and gay," but when they've got an actual, honest, genderqueer protagonist they go full on the other direction and pour on the testosterone. Typical.

MC_Lovecraft said:
Like, the only other explicitly agender character on TV that I can think of is Janet from the Good Place (Not a Girl).
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There is also Nightshade from Transformers Earthspark, delivered with anvilicious "explanation for kids" level directness as the B-plot for one of the late-season episodes. Their toy is pretty good too, turning into a stylized art deco owl.
 
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I think you are all being far too worried about Alexander Skarsgard being masculine. I always imagined Murderbot as relatively close to his physique. Put him in a shirt, or keep him clothed and he absolutely can be an everyman but I do anticipate most people assume that sec unit's are 'male'. They aren't, but nobody actually see's that part of things because they generally are clothed and armored. Skarsgard is not an Arnold Schwarzenegger or other bodybuilder type from the 80s so I think can fit into the 'generic male in clothing' requirement of a sec unit. A more explicitly androgynous person might not hit the same level of expected strength that they are supposed to have and represent.

Now if they are constantly showing him with his shirt off, or in short sleeves etc and emphasizing those qualities he isn't a great choice. Otherwise though I think he can be. Have faith, and remember not to call him Murderbot, "That name was PRIVATE"
 
Skychan said:
A more explicitly androgynous person might not hit the same level of expected strength that they are supposed to have and represent.
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The idea that audiences will only believe your robot is strong if it has bulging human muscles is insane to me. Super-Strength works better on screen when the person displaying the strength doesn't look like they could conceivably do what they are doing with their innate strength. And again, Sec-Units are not Space Marines. We are explicitly shown what the militarized version of Sec-Units look like, and they could absolutely be portrayed by Skarsgard, but Murderbot is essentially a high tech rent-a-cop. They are furniture. If you are admiring their physique they have already failed to be the inconspicuous, unremarkable thing that they were designed to be. Then, when Murderbot actively changes their appearance, they do so to become even more inconspicuous. I'm sorry, but unless they are going to give Skarsgard the Steve Rogers treatment from the first part of Captain America, he is just a frustratingly poor fit.

Come to think of it, I would actually be completely fine with Skarsgard voicing MB, while they are portrayed by a different actor, a la Darth Vader. Like I've said, I actually really like him as an actor, I just viscerally object to this casting and strongly suspect the decision was made with absolutely no thought regarding the gender makeup/politics of the people who actually buy the books. I think a studio exec saw a popular thing and decided he would hire a popular actor to make the popular thing so that he could make lots and lots of money. The fact that the thing is popular because it's deeply queer and well-written (which is agonizingly rare) almost certainly never entered into the conversation beyond noting that the LGBTQ community are reliable consumers whom the studios can count on to consume whatever slop they churn out as long as they sprinkle a little queerbait on top.

I'm not telling anybody to not watch the show. I'm not even saying it is guaranteed to be bad, but I'm absolutely going to push back against the idea that we don't have anything to be upset about. Enby representation is basically non-existent, and when I see active erasure happening in a franchise that I am this invested in, I am going to be loud about it.

Edit: Even setting aside the gender aspect, having MB be a tall, muscular figure just clashes with the tone and themes of the story they are in. Murderbot is the underdog, woefully outgunned in most confrontations, surviving through obscurity, community, and sheer bloody-mindedness. It makes sense from a story perspective to highlight those characteristics by casting an actor who doesn't look like they can solve all of their problems with pure physicality. Skarsgard is 6'4" barefoot. He is going to tower over the rest of the cast, no matter who else they pick, and that just feels like an obviously wrong choice.
 
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I'm not even sure you can adapt this. The stories kind of revolve around the inner dialogue of Murderbot and that's obviously not going to translate well to TV.
 
Poorly Drawn said:
I'm not even sure you can adapt this. The stories kind of revolve around the inner dialogue of Murderbot and that's obviously not going to translate well to TV.
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This is I think the harder part. It's going to require a lot of fallback on old 40's style voiceover.

As for the whole sec unit appearance debate, yes they are 'generic' looking, but also a product. As a product they should be unobtrusive, yet when looked at directly appear strong and give that impression. You don't hire a security guard who looks like Animal, you hire one who looks like Sweetums, (to use mupets for an example). Yes Animal is really strong but doesn't look it, so as a product you don't produce Animal for commercial use. I think that Skaarsguard can if wardrobe is used properly walk that line between looking strong but not ridiculously so. An example of someone who couldn't would be Alan Ritchson the actor who plays Reacher in the TV series. You can't hide his physique in regular cloths.

Ritchson - in a suit

Skaarsguard in a suit


I can absolutely see Skaarsguard as a sec unit, while Ritchson would be the low end combat unit example.
 
I wonder how they're going to do the whole "Company" thing, since we won't be in Murderbot's internal narration and it will be more obvious that it's censoring anything related to it?
 
Maybe? Murderbot actively censors anything with the Company's name or logo to the Company in a way that is outright commented on in Network Effect, as a pretty neat bit of characterization. I'd hate to lose that.
 
Ok.

You know, however this ends up turning out, I'm glad that Martha Wells will get some money and exposure out of it. Making it as an author is tough, and even being successful doesn't mean that you're well off financially.
 
MC_Lovecraft said:
Edit: Even setting aside the gender aspect, having MB be a tall, muscular figure just clashes with the tone and themes of the story they are in. Murderbot is the underdog, woefully outgunned in most confrontations, surviving through obscurity, community, and sheer bloody-mindedness. It makes sense from a story perspective to highlight those characteristics by casting an actor who doesn't look like they can solve all of their problems with pure physicality. Skarsgard is 6'4" barefoot. He is going to tower over the rest of the cast, no matter who else they pick, and that just feels like an obviously wrong choice.
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I generally agree with you on the rest of your post, but I'm pretty sure MB is tall? I think MB physically looks down to look at people's faces several times and I think Mensah says something along the lines of "I forgot how tall you are". It's just that other SecUnits are more imposing in their armor, Combat Bots are massive, and contaminated humans are terrifying. It's a bit hard for me to check for specifics though because I listened to the audiobooks.

But in a search, I did find that Mensah does describe MB as having a "lean bulk" in linked short story which fits with how I viewed it.
 
We'll see. Murderbot at least is open to a lot of interpretation, the rest of the cast will basically determine whether this is "open to interpretation, this is one take on all of this" or "We needed an action movie so we got an action movie dude to be dudely."
 
My hot take is that the actor is perfect for the role.

Murderbot's first impression needs to be "dangerous corporate tool". And seeing how the fandom is treating Skaarsguard as exactly that it looks like the glove fits.

The rest of the cast is where more care in the casting needs to go.
 
Alexander Skarsgård would not be who I initially cast as Murderbot, but I am willing to see how the project shapes up.

(I would have thought Asia Kate Dillion would be a better fit, but dream casts are always disappointments since they rarely happen.)
 
As far as its appearance goes, about the only consistent headcanons I have are:

1) Murderbot isn't necessarily white, in fact reading the descriptions "whiteness" doesn't seem to really exist as a category in the sense that most people are described as darker skin, and even those described as having lighter skin (with no indication of how much lighter) than some other character are described as such in a relational sense, rather than in a reified "whiteness as a construct" sense.
2) Tall.
3) Because it's constantly recycling flesh, it probably looks weirdly babyfaced/younger than you'd think at first blush, just because its skin never has time to get old or wear out... because it is losing all of it in the aftermath of horrific battles and regrowing more of it.
 
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