The movie (not the followup Cinemax TV music/interview show) was a pioneering work of cyberpunk. Gibson's Neuromancer had only been published a year earlier, a

The movie (not the followup Cinemax TV music/interview show) was a pioneering work of cyberpunk. Gibson's Neuromancer had only been published a year earlier, and some of the tropes in this movie ("I need an operator!") would show up later in The Matrix and other works. The Verge did an interview with the creators: https://www.theverge.com/2015/4/2/8285139/max-headroom-oral-history-80s-cyberpunk-interview https://www.theverge.com/2015/4/2/8285139/max-headroom-oral-...