Ridley Scott to Produce Philip K Dick's The Man In the High Castle 144
hawkinspeter (831501) writes Amazon has given the green light to produce the Hugo award-winning "The Man in the High Castle". This is after the four-hour mini-series was rejected by Syfy and afterwards by the BBC.
Philip K Dick's novel takes place in an alternate universe where the Axis Powers won the Second World War. It's one of his most successful works, probably due to him actually spending the time to do some editing on it (most of his fiction was produced rapidly in order to get some money). Ridley Scott has previously adapted PKD's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" as the film Blade Runner, so it will be interesting to see how close he keeps to the source material this time. This news has been picked up by a few sites: International Business Times; The Register and Deadline.
Re:Considering his history... (Score:4, Interesting)
Making a movie from a novel is rather hard. They are different experiences, rely on different cues, have different timings and often play to different audiences.
Yes, Blade Runner isn't Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Aliens is just Giger and Dan O'Bannon [wikipedia.org] and bog knows what Prometheus was about aside from Charleze Theron in a tight fitting flight suit, but it will be interesting to see how this turns out.
Beats Transformer movies and the sad fall of Joss Whedon.
Blade Runner's script had little to do with Ridley (Score:5, Interesting)
What Ridley Scott brought to the table was an art-director's viewpoint. I believe it was his call that the world be dystopian rather than utopian. Syd Mead was brought in to realize that vision from Ridley's sketches.
Blade Runner was a magical coming-together of quite a few artists while they were at the height of their careers, Scott, Mead, Ford, Hauer hell, even Vangellis never was better. Blade Runner was Scott's attempt to bring back Film Noir in a sci-fi setting -- something that seems common now, but was a radical breakthrough then.
It's a tough act to follow. And as much as I like Ridley's visual style, his latest films have suffered badly from too much money lavished on sets and effects, and not enough on script and acting.
I can also say that, having read "Man in High Castle", that's not an easy book to put to film. It's a huge, complicated story that's not easy to follow. I just hope that they put the work into making the story work, and not gloss over it just to work in explosions and effects.
I had heard that Ridley was interested in Joe Haldeman's "The Forever War" -- not *that's* a movie I want to see. That book blew my mind, and I really, really, really want a good movie of that.
Producing, not Directing (Score:4, Interesting)
Scott's producing the series, not directing. David Semel's actually in the chair. He's directing experience across a lot of serial shows, which bodes well for his ability to respect established characters and storylines. So between the two of them, if nothing else it should be a smooth production.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm078... [imdb.com]
Back then... (Score:4, Interesting)
From TFS: "[Man in a High Castle is] one of his most successful works"
Back in 1962 (when it was published) maybe... but by the time of my generation of SF readers (coming of age in the late 70's, early 80's) it was largely passed over in favor of Electric Sheep. With WWII much further in the past than when it was published, and the Red Menace having been replaced by MAD... it's foriegn dictatorship wasn't as relevant as the overcrowded overpolluted post apoplyptic dystopia of Sheep was to a generation that was influenced by the social chaos of the late 60's and had lived through the shocks of the early 70's. Stories involving the Nazi's (High Castle, Rocket Ship Galileo, even the (then) more recent Iron Dream) were seen largely as quaint anachronisms not classics. Which, in a large way, is also why Cyberpunk emerges in the same era...
Re:Syfylys passes on an actual classic (Score:5, Interesting)
They have a couple of good properties now, but for the most part its crap.
And where is the classic SciFi appreciation? Forbidden Planet, Them, The Day the Earth Stood Still (without Neo). When is the last time they showed a black and white program other than Twilight Zone?
If I was in charge of SyFy:
1) Classic movie of the week with a Turner Classic Movies style intro talking about the movie, its impact, roots and the making of the movie.
2) Guest hosts introducing their favorite SciFi
3) Put together a stable of actors, authors and directors and host a weekly 90 minute-3 sketch late night program modeled on Saturday Night Live, but focusing on scifi story telling instead of comedy. Some of the sketches could be one offs, others a mini-series. Probably not live, although that might be fun too...
4) Get some real scifi lovers to look for classic works that they could get the rights to produce as movies. They dont have to be high budget. Take the same budget they spend now on their monster of the week movies, spend less on special effects and throw it at the scripts. I know thats not a lot, but give me a day and $500 and I can improve the hell out of their scripts.
5) No wrestling
6) Change the name back to SciFi