Philip K. Dick's 'Ubik' To Be Filmed

bowman9991 writes "Could this be the new Blade Runner? SFFMedia reports that Celluloid Dreams has obtained the movie rights to Philip K. Dick's science fiction masterpiece 'Ubik.' First published in 1969, Ubik's central character is Joe Chip, a technician for a telepathic organization that employs people with the ability to block certain psychic powers so they can secure other people's privacy. In the novel, the dead are kept in 'half-life,' a form of cryogenic suspension, with limited consciousness and communication ability. A mystical substance called Ubik, available in spray-can form, is the only thing stopping reality from disintegrating before Joe's eyes. It'll be hard to film, but fantastic if they get it right!"

Re:Uhmm... quid pro quo..addendum.

[Vectronic]

From The Summary: "A mystical substance called Ubik, available in spray-can form, is the only thing stopping reality from disintegrating before Joe's eyes"

From Wikipedia: "This substance, whose name is derived from the word "ubiquity", has the property of preserving people who are in half-life."

Draw your own conclusions about what chemical properties it may have.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep vs Ubik

[bazald]

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is largely set in a potentially realistic dark future setting, some things more advanced, others decaying. Most of the environment is easy to make real without making it look silly, not to downplay the great work done by Ridley Scott and everyone else involved. The one aspect of the novel that would be difficult to reasonably translate to the silver screen is Mercerism, the animal worshiping cult/religion of the future. So, they dropped it from the film, which takes a slightly different view anyway. (The only reason it would be difficult is because the way in which one tries to become one with Mercer is very abstractly represented throughout the novel.)

Ubik on the other hand is almost entirely abstract stuff. In fact, it is more abstract than the Mercerism stuff. There is some great imagery in Ubik that would be easy to translate, but by and large, making the novel come to life without making it look ridiculous would be very difficult. The way I picture Ubik, the scenes would have to appear incomplete for most of the novel, from the standpoint of anyone in cold-pac, and that would be much harder to pull off. I doubt anyone that the current Hollywood industry is likely to pull it off. The best they could hope to do is to make something reminiscent of The Thirteenth Floor.

Re:Previous efforts

[osu-neko]

Yeah. And shooting wife...right in her head, while saying 'consider this as divorce'??? It is relevant.

This, of course, is totally distorting the scene to make it sound more shocking than it actually was. When you phrase it accurately, "shooting the enemy agent who was pretending to be his wife", it sounds a lot less shocking.

Script

[Anonymous Coward]

You all know that Dick already wrote a script, don't you?

From wikipedia:
"Attempts to produce an Ubik film

In 1974, French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin commissioned Dick to write a screenplay for an Ubik film. Dick completed the screenplay, turning it in within a month, but Gorin never filmed the project. The screenplay was published in 1985 as Ubik: The Screenplay (ISBN-13: 978-0911169065)."

I have. I have not read it. Anyone knows if it is any good or do i have to have my own judgement -.-

Dick worked on an Ubik adaptation previously...

[majorgoodvibes]

from Wikipedia:
"filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin commissioned Dick to write a screenplay for an Ubik film. Dick completed the screenplay, turning it in within a month, but Gorin never filmed the project. The screenplay was published in 1985 as Ubik: The Screenplay (ISBN-13: 978-0911169065)."

I've read interviews with Dick where he described how he envisioned the film. The book describes modern technology devolving into more primitive forms. He said that he wanted the film to be shot on the highest quality media of the time and then progressively worse media like 16mm film and then black and white 8mm. I'm doubting that this film will be shot this way. Amazing book though.

May never be filmed

[dreamchaser]

Just because someone acquired the movie rights to a book doesn't mean it will ever see the light of day. It's not uncommon for rights to be bought and then for the project to languish indefinitely.

Purchasing rights != filming movie

Re:To recreate Blade Runner...

[hawkinspeter]

You should try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_High_Castle [wikipedia.org] - it's probably his best written novel. He mostly had to churn out his novels as quickly as possible to pay the rent, but High Castle is an exception.

A little more digging...

[Vastad]

The company that managed to get the rights to Ubik is the French company Celluloid Dreams. Ignoring all the inevitable inspired frog jokes, this immediately made me more hopeful. French cinema brought us Delicatessen (highly recommended if you haven't seen it), The 5th Element (any fellow Moebius fans here?) and City of Lost Children et al.

You can have a look at their portfolio [imdb.com] of which I recognise only two (Son of Rambow and The Magic Flute) and both were determined art-house flicks. Perhaps there is a cinephile on /. who can give us a quick overview of the quality of their portfolio?

Anyway, go ahead and put a tick in the box for "Art House/European production company".

Probably the most important group will be the team comprising the scriptwriters, director, reps from the PKD estate and the prinicipal storyboard artists. They will literally have to make the most amazing comic ever created before a single frame has been filmed.

[SPOILER]

To those who couldn't understand Ubik, it helps if you've read VALIS first and alot about PKD himself, particularly the period of time right after he recovered from being certified insane.

VALIS mixes fictional elements with real life experiences of his own becoming a bizarre self-referential story with one theme being how we take reality, particularly the model we hold of 'reality' in our heads, for granted. PKD noted that while he was apparently insane, he recalled that he never once stopped in mid-thought and assessed that what he was perceiving or thinking was crazy or mad. His perception and thoughts while "mad" were indistinguishable from when he was "sane". He could not point out a boundary separating the period of insanity from sanity. It just didn't exist. There is no built-in internal yardstick despite what a lot of us may believe. Its something you model during the process of living and it gains 'rigidity' upon adulthood. When you've apparently fallen off the edge and broken that yardstick, someone else has to tell you its broken. Someone else has to give you a new yardstick. Someone else has to 'reset it/re-model' for you. In his case it was his doctors. But then, who is checking the doctors' yardsticks aren't broken either? What if they are mad too and no one knows better? The mad healing the mad? This revelation profoundly affected him.

To the gentleman earlier who seemed to have the definitive opinion that Ubik was just a dying man's hallucinations, I can assure you I never felt sure about the ending as it seemed perfectly within PKD's twisted sense of humour for the ending to be just another misleading lie, further compounding that you just can't take what's presented to you for granted. I see Ubik as partly an attempt to share what it was like being insane. Imagine that you are directly involved in the events of the book and that when the book ends - right when you close the back cover - that you are suddenly looking into the kind blue eyes of a distinguished looking man in a white coat congratulating you on your recovery.

But that's just my 2 cents.

[END SPOILER]