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!"

To recreate Blade Runner...

[ktappe]

....they need: 1) A good actor as they had in Harrison Ford. 2) Faith that their audience is intelligent, so they don't have to go all "Summer blockbuster" on us. 3) A director who is willing to give the film the atmosphere it needs. Let's cross our fingers we get all of these.

I may be too overly hopeful, but...

[Paperweight]

I hope a gifted director comes along and makes a GOOD science fiction adaptation of Asimov's Foundation series.

Re:Why the fuss over blade runner?

[PoeticExplosion]

I hated it the first time too. Wait a few months, and watch it again. Then maybe a few months after that. It's a very subtle movie, which is why it did terribly at the time but is now a cult classic.

America loves guns

[Anonymous Coward]

1. America loves guns
2. Bladerunner has big images of guns
3. Ubik might not have big images of guns
---
1. & 2. => Bladerunner is a popular movie.
1. & 3. => Ubik will never be a popular movie.

Re:Previous efforts

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

I loved the effect in Waking Life because they used it more as a base, then hand animated on top of it and actually made good use of the fact that it was no longer live action. Best example I could think of being when the girl was explaining love and they animated what she was saying as if you could see her thoughts.

Fit the premise of the movie perfectly.
It also seemed to help guide you towards what was important as most scenes seemed to be just as detailed as they needed to be, with some things shining through more.

OTOH, A Scanner Darkley used it more as just a form of special effects, a filter to be left on to make the movie pretty. I didn't dislike it as much as some of the posters here did, but it was much more of a gimmick than an artistic tool for sure.

Re:I may be too overly hopeful, but...

[mdenham]

Now THAT would be a trilogy worth making! (I know there were more than three, but surely you can guess the three I'm talking about.)

I think you can expect something like this around the time that we see any of Jack L. Chalker's books turned into movies.

In other words, when hell freezes over, baby.

Re:Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep vs Ubik

[Anonymous Coward]

Blade Runner was a very good film and a terrible adaptation, they left out the most interesting aspects of the novel.

My one basis for optimism regarding Ubik is that the project really makes no sense if you're not going to make a serious effort to adapt the book. I can't imagine how it could be dumbed down into an action movie.

It's a huge challenge and failure seems pretty likely but I'm keeping an open mind for now.

Re:Previous efforts

[Drishmung]

I would disagree that it was not in any way true to the short story. While it missed the sting in the tail of the short story, the constant themes of perception vs reality were the same.

I got much more upset about the lame physics.

Yes, we'd agree that 'inspired by' would be closer to the mark, but as an adaptation of a short story to a film, it wasn't too bad.

Re:To recreate Blade Runner...

[hawkinspeter]

To be fair, Rutger Hauer doesn't need to destroy the movies he's in; they're already rubbish (Bladerunner and Hitcher being about the only exceptions).

Re:Please let them not ruin this

[Tenebrousedge]

If I understand you right, you're implying that the movie Fight Club had a vapid ending. I would like to note that Chuck Palahniuk said that he liked the movie ending better that the one he wrote.

For my part, the Pixies have never sounded better or more appropriate than in that final scene. Also, I believe that in terms of the film's intended message (rejection of the values of T. Durden), having something positive happen to the narrator as a result of the rejection is almost necessary.

Re:Previous efforts

[soliptic]

To be honest I think Totall Recall is about the truest PKD film adaption there is. Yes, including Blade Runner.

The spirit of "We can remember it for you wholesale" was basically "guy has his memories messed with to think he went to Mars - or maybe it was that he did go to Mars and memories were messed with to think he didnt - etc". The film just made it longer and stacked more 'rug-pulled-from-your-under-your-feet' twists on top of each other.

Also, although it's schlocky, so was PKD. Seriously, if you think PKD was a literary master with elegant dialogue and profound characterisation... er... read more widely? And to be clear, I'm a massive PKD fan. The value of PKD is in the brainfucking ideas, but the actual "texture" of them is fairly pulp. Like Total Recall.

Blade Runner OTOH was verging on Hollywoodisation at it's worst. The spirit of "...Electric Sheep" was not "catch the replicant", it was far more broadly philosophical: hence all the stuff about android pets, social class, Mercerism, etc, which basically vanished from the film. Instead we got a simplified Cop Chases Bad Guy affair, with the MTV-esque depth you'd expect from an ex-advertisement director.

So, yeah, for my money Total Recall is a way more PKDish film than Blade Runner, which I consider perhaps the most overrated sci-fi film going...

Re:Previous efforts

[JebusIsLord]

Really? I thought it was far more primitive (and thus eye-irritating) in Waking Life. On top of that, Waking life played out like an extremely pretentious introduction to philosophy 101. I fast-forwarded through large portions of it.

The style worked perfectly when you consider the people in Scanner were all psychedelic drug users. They got drug use down 100%, even going so far as to hire only drug-using A-list actors. Maybe you have to have done them to appreciate...

Re:Previous efforts

[Wicked Zen]

The spirit of "...Electric Sheep" was not "catch the replicant", it was far more broadly philosophical: hence all the stuff about android pets, social class, Mercerism, etc, which basically vanished from the film. Instead we got a simplified Cop Chases Bad Guy affair, with the MTV-esque depth you'd expect from an ex-advertisement director.

I don't think this is fair at all. The spirit of Blade Runner is not "catch the replicant" at all. The spirit is "what makes us human?" The genius of Blade Runner (and this seems to fly over the heads of the average) is that it manages to imply a great deal, leaving questions for the viewer to answer, rather than beating one about the head and neck with them, in the way -- for example -- that the Matrix sequels did.

Certainly the novel explored the themes more deeply, but movies aren't novels. You have to pick something and go with that. The movie focuses on Deckard and the replicants, as the replicants seek the realization of the dream to live, Deckard seeks them out and destroys them. Yet of the cast, only Rutger Hauer's replicant Batty has anything to say about "humanity." It is in my opinion one of the more meaningful, and moving, monologues in any movie.

Yeah...uh...anyway, I love Ubik and I really hope they make a good engaging movie out of it and not some hackjob made just to market toys.

If you actually read Ubik...

[doom]

If you actually read Ubik, you'll find that it's an exceedingly minor Philip K. Dick novel -- to my eye, it looks as though it was written really rapidly, with an ending tacked on at random when he had enough pages. Call Dick a great writer if you like, but every single work of a great writer is not deserving of the label "masterpiece". Not that this has anything to do with what kind of film they're going to make (if any -- most film deals flop without producing anything, you guys know that, right?) because as with all the other Dick novels that have been "filmed" the screen-writers will do whatever they want to movie-up the material. The metaphysical joke that Dick had in mind (the answer to everything is everywhere) isn't going to survive the process. Essentially, they paid for the rights to a Philip K. Dick novel, just so they could say that they did.

While we're on the subject, can I point out that Philip K. Dick is not the only science fiction writer in the world? Like I said, call him a great writer if you like, but if so there are other great writers whose material could be raided help get the screenwriters off of the dime. You could film Brunner's "Stand on Zanibar", or Sturgeon's "More than Human", or Aldis' "Barefoot in the Head", or Delany's "Babel-17", or Fritz Leiber's "The Big Time", or Sterling's "Holy Fire"...

Re:If you actually read Ubik...

[Abcd1234]

If you actually read Ubik, you'll find that it's an exceedingly minor Philip K. Dick novel

Funny, because I've read a few of his works (mainly his more notable stuff), and 1) I thought it was quite good (as good as Do Androids Dream..., definitely better than The Man in the High Castle), and 2) so do most other critics and readers of his stuff.

But, hey, it's obviously more cool to buck the trend and look like some sort of high-brow outsider...