Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future is a 1985 cyberpunk television film created by British company Chrysalis Visual Programming Ltd. for Channel 4.

Events lead crusading journalist Edison Carter to crash a motorcycle and suffer head trauma from a parking lot safety sign reading "MAX.

While Carter recovers and exposes corporate corruption, his AI twin Max becomes popular as a witty TV host who criticizes society and media.

[2] On 4 April 1985, Channel 4 transmitted the TV movie Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future, starring Matt Frewer, Amanda Pays, Paul Spurrier, Nickolas Grace, and W. Morgan Sheppard.

[2] Following its cancellation, American network ABC commissioned Chrysalis to produce a new dramatic television series based on the characters, concepts, and world established in the film Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future.

[2] The new programme, entitled simply Max Headroom, featured Matt Frewer, Amanda Pays and W. Morgan Sheppard reprising their original roles.

Jones witnesses Carter's crash via security cameras but is unable to arrive in time before Lynch's hired goons remove him from the scene.

Instead, they decide to profit by selling Max Headroom to Blank Reg, the presenter of "Big Time", a pirate television station, and Carter to a "body bank" where he will be harvested for organs.

The character of Max Headroom and his nature as a computer-generated person was created by George Stone,[1] Annabel Jankel, and Rocky Morton.

"[5] The creators also appreciated that "Max Headroom" was comically ironic since the character acted as if he knew and understood everything, while the name indicated his mind was actually empty of true knowledge and wisdom.

[2] Producer Peter Wagg hired writers David Hansen and Paul Owen to construct Max Headroom's "whole persona",[6] which Morton described as the "very sterile, arrogant, Western personification of the middle-class, male TV host".

[7] The background story provided for the Max Headroom character was rooted in a dystopian near-future dominated by television and large corporations, devised by George Stone and eventual script writer Steve Roberts.

[2] Producer and Max Headroom co-creator Annabel Jankel thought Frewer would be a good choice to masquerade as a person whose appearance was designed by a computer, seeing from his casting polaroid photo that he had "unbelievably well-defined features.

The illusion of a computer-generated character who only exists in computers and TV broadcast signals was accomplished by having Matt Frewer wear prosthetic make-up, contact lenses, and a plastic molded suit while sitting in front of a blue screen.

[9] In discussing Max's fictional origin story, it was first proposed that he could be an AI created to stand-in for a human TV host who was late for his own show.