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.
Actually read the book! (Score:2)
Can't remember if I got it from a used book store or old public library stock; unlike some of his other stuff, I found this a lot more approachable (maybe because of that editing?). I can see why the BBC might reject it, dealing with Nazis running everything, but syfy? Must require too much thought for them.
Blade Runner is my favorite movie of all time--it and the original Matrix are one of the very few movies I can watch again and again. I love almost everything that Ridley does (maybe YOU hated Promet
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I read this as part of a "Science Fiction" course in college about 30 years ago. I don't recall much about it except that I really dug the alternate-history aspect of the book.
I hope the movie happens and it turns out good. We need more good science fiction movies, because there haven't been many in the last 20-some years. I liked "Europa Report" but the format was pretty cliched, and the movie was almost the same as "Apollo 18", but less improbable. To be honest, I have a hard time remembering any real
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SF is the abbreviation for "real science fiction". SciFi is the abbreviation for action/horror movies with futuristic explosions. Harlan Ellison suggests "skiffy" as the pronunciation of the latter, and some have taken to writing it that way too. I hear Edge of Tomorrow was actually good SF, but I haven't seen it yet - but 1 a year is lucky for SF films.
Plus you have films like Gravity, which wasn't even SciFi, but instead a historical period piece. Remember when we had shuttles, and the will to build
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Revisionist histories are interesting, but shouldn't get praise because of their nature. In this case it was very interesting to read about the new US. Still, it didn't have any partic
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It's not revisionist. The Axis actually won.
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It's not revisionist. The Axis actually won.
Nice!
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I can see why the BBC might reject it, dealing with Nazis running everything, but syfy? Must require too much thought for them.
It might simply be that whatever it was that was pitched to these two networks just wasn't very good (too expensive, bad casting, bad screenplay, etc.). Or maybe they just saw this as a worn-out [memory-alpha.org] meme [memory-alpha.org].
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Prometheus was a piece of shit.
Everything Wrong With Prometheus In 4 Minutes Or Less
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Aliens was boring as fuck.
I've lost my faith in Riddle to make anything good.
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"Aliens was boring as fuck."
You're opinion on all things movies is now ignored.
Apparently anything that doesn't spoon feed you pointless action for 90 minutes requires to much thinking on your part.
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I find everything "Alien", "Aliens", and all the sequels, to be *yawn*.
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Alien was good. Aliens was OK. After that, it was awful.
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I'm just worried that he'll insist that the protagonist is a replicant or something like he did for Blade Runner, when there really isn't that vibe in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. He admitted in an NPR interview that he never read the book before making that movie, so I don't think that he's qualified to make such declarations.
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Amen. Deckard had the Voigt-Kampf test performed on him. He is demonstrably _not_ a replicant (if you trust the Voigt-Kampf test, of course).
Considering his history... (Score:3, Insightful)
in Prometheus, he essentially just re-gurgitated "Alien", what could go wrong?
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.
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Nothing says 'sad fall' like making the best superhero movies of all time.
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If you like superhero movies.
Oh, Joss, why couldn't you have stuck with Westerns?
Re:Considering his history... (Score:5, Insightful)
People who reject content based off of arbitrary genre preferences are a burden to themselves and others. I don't believe that prior to Firefly, you would have said, "I'm really wanting another Western." You don't like superheroes you say, and I call bullshit. You just don't want to be lumped in with liking something that's become mainstream. Get over it.
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Do you like movies about ponies?
Yeah. I don't really dislike superhero movies, but honestly the constant stream of super avenger-men movies made the whole thing kind of boring. It's like when all games were WW2 FPSes, except worse because Nazis are more interesting than comic book villains.
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Do you like movies about ponies?
Yeah. I don't really dislike superhero movies, but honestly the constant stream of super avenger-men movies made the whole thing kind of boring. It's like when all games were WW2 FPSes, except worse because Nazis are more interesting than comic book villains.
I neither like nor dislike movies about ponies. I like good movies. Is there a good movie about ponies? If so, I may watch it. I remember kind of liking "Black Stallion" when we saw it in the theater, but that was no pony. Looking forward to hearing your pony film recommendation.
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It is absolutely possible to notice a pattern of genre preferences. I have a hard time believing that you are truly, utterly agnostic to all data points and extrapolations.
I like the Avengers. But it doesn't shock me when somebody just isn't a fan of the superhero movie genre. I don't like sports movies. I suppose it's hypothetically possible that a really great one could come out, but I'd bet against it.
(I'm a bit skeptical of calling Firefly a Western, even if the producers called it that -- but then,
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It is absolutely possible to notice a pattern of genre preferences.
Agreed. Yes, I have noticed many patterns of genre preferences in others. The most common pattern I've noticed is the homophobic a person is, the more they love macho-seeming movies, and more likely to be secretly doubting their own sexuality. What does that have to do with disagreeing with me?
I have a hard time believing that you are truly, utterly agnostic to all data points and extrapolations.
Also correct. What does that have to do with the fact that I am truly, utterly agnostic to genre preferences?
I like the Avengers. But it doesn't shock me when somebody just isn't a fan of the superhero movie genre. I don't like sports movies. I suppose it's hypothetically possible that a really great one could come out, but I'd bet against it.
(I'm a bit skeptical of calling Firefly a Western, even if the producers called it that -- but then, I don't know that I really have a good handle on what a Western actually is).
It sounds to me like it's time for a John Ford deep dive for you. Maybe a little Sam Peckinpah. It's t
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Whedon's quality issue with Avengers is the same one we find with Scott's "Prometheus", Aronofsky's "Noah", or Lucas's "Anal Excretions with Jar Jar Binx".
Too many SFX. I enjoy tech demos as much as the next person, but part of the charm of Firefly was that a low budget forced the team to focus on story, personality, and acting to do what they were trying to do with their special effects. It also forces the creative folk to manage a larger team -- which takes time away from the developing the "soul" of th
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> Yet to see Much Ado About Nothing, though.
It's definitely worth seeing. The dialog is pretty much word-for-word, and we all know the story. It's the performances and directing that really make the film.
It's like... all your favorite people in the world getting together at a garden house to do Shakespeare. Cozy and fun.
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He's never done a western.
Post Civil war in space? yes.
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Kept the title?
The title of the book is "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" and the movie title is "Bladerunner".
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Different mediums require different approaches and while Philip K Dick is a giant among science fiction writing, Ridley Scott is an artist with the big screen. I am hugely excited to see what he will do with this book.
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I know this may be blasphemy for a lot of folks, but I wasn't that impressed with "Do Androids Dream?". I think "Blade Runner" was a superior story, and of course, it's an excellent movie all around. I hope I don't have to turn in my Nerd card now.
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Which version of Blade Runner?
There is the original version, without the noir-style internal monologue, and the director's cut, which has it. It makes a big difference I think. Harrison Ford supposedly was against the monologue, and performed it poorly on purpose. Then Scott / the studio cut the bad monologue from the theatrical release.
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Wrong way around surely: The test audience found the movie confusing and sad and so the internal monologue and the happy ending was added. Later came the director's cut which attempted (unsuccessfully) to outdo 2001: A Space Odyssey for longest CGI scene with nothing happening.
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There was no CGI in 2001.
That was all done with models and old school special effects.
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Same with Blade Runner! It's (one of) the last great SF films with no CGI at all.
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I'm not one of these purists who thinks only practical effects are good, but "Blade Runner" is one of those movies that shows you don't need CGI to make a visually stunning movie. The only good CGI is CGI that doesn't look like CGI, or when you say, "I only know this is CGI because that can't be done in real life."
I just remembered that "District 9" was a good recent SF movie, and I thought the effects in that movie were excellent. Just enough to make it believable, not enough to look like you're watchin
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Google "slit scan". It was an amazing process used to create the Stargate sequence, especially amazing because of the crazy amounts of manual work it took. Another iconic example of slit scan filming is the old opening sequence for "Doctor Who".
This forensic reconstruction of the original gels used in "2001" is a fascinating bit of movie archaeology: http://seriss.com/people/erco/... [seriss.com]
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Yeah, I think the terms are used interchangeably these days.
There was, for all intents and purposes, no CGI in 1981. Computer effects at the time of Blade Runner were negligible and amounted mostly to wireframe 3D in computer displays. I mean "Tron" was was watershed of computer effects, and 95% its effects were hand-drawn animation and a crazy amount of compositing. It was an amazing triumph of visual effects, but it owes much more to the ground-breaking art direction than to the actual use of computer
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"Blade Runner" one of the very few instances were the movie is better than the book it's based on, but it still owes a lot to the book.
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'Battlefield Earth' was another one. Not that it was a good movie; just better then the book.
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Am I the only one who read "The Man in the High Castle" and thought it was a confusing mess?
Any movie adaptation would have to pare the story line down to its bone.
That could only improve it.
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AI isn't THAT bad; if you turn it off before it goes into the Spielberg added ending. He ran out of power and died. End of story.
is it me or is it 30 years too late? (Score:1)
WW2 is old enough that most people don't care about it by now except to study for the test in school
i don't see this being very popular
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Not everyone is 14 years old.
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Most people don't know the real quote: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it for the next few decades. After that it's all new shit."
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We must learn from our past mistakes, so that we may repeat them precisely.
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Or the paraphrase, "History repeats itself because nobody listened the first time." (In practice, the singular "first time" is insufficient.)
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I certainly believe that there are new things under the sun. I just don't believe that there are as many of them as our trendsetting media would like us to think. Come to think of it, I'll bet that the truly new things under the sun are seldom well covered. I guess Sturgeon's Law applies.
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.
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Wish I had mod points. Your post is very interesting and insightful and one of the only posts I've ever felt a strong compulsion to mod up.
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...I can also say that, having read "Man in High Castle", that's not an easy book to put to film...
Funny, I've always thought exactly the opposite. When I read it I can visualize the movie scenes in my head, and I almost feel I could write a screenplay from it, even though I've never written one before. I can't think of any other novel that I've had that response to - especially ones written by Dick.
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Phillip K Dick wrote the novel by using the I Ching to randomly create plot points. The I Ching features pre-eminently in the novel.
I'm not sure how well that will translate to the big screen.
Certainly the whole "The Axis Won WW2!" thing will translate over easily, but the book really isn't about that.
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I believe it was his call that the world be dystopian rather than utopian.
Well, the book was pretty darn dystopian... (well, it was a Philip K. Dick book). Scott did throw out Fancher's original script, which focused on the envionmental themes of the book, to instead focus on the question of humanity; a good thing too, because it's a much more compelling theme.
Scott, Mead, Ford, Hauer hell, even Vangellis never was better.
Let's not forget the work of primary script writer, David Peoples, who also authored the Clint Eastwood western Unforgiven. Two very different films and yet sharing a surprising number of commonalities.
I can also say that, having read "Man in High Castle", that's not an easy book to put to film.
Then again, neither w
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Remeber when it was call Tech Noir?
man, Blade Runner is great. For the record I prefer the voice over for that kind of film.
Yeah, it does seem like Ridley seems to suffer a common Hollywood problem: Believing ones own PR.
He's great, has great vision, but he needs detail experts who are also well known in their field.
I understand the issue. When you work with a great team, but it's always your name people mention and talk about it, I see where that could warp your view point after decades. I just wish they w
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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 think it's my favorite work by Dick, and one of my favorite books period. I would love to see a good film adaptation (and the miniseries format is probably well suited to it). The complicated story (with all of its bizarre, but essential, elements) does pose a challenge. I'm also worried about how Imperial Japan will be handled. Contrary to some other comments here, the Nazis are basically a non-presence in the book, and the relations between the Californian characters and Japanese occupiers are racially
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Having just read The Forever War last week (and then Old Man's War, and now Forever Free), I agree wholeheartedly. That is a book that could do well on-screen (provided it doesn't turn into Starship Troopers).
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I watched a documentary about movie art direction and production design, and they had an extended segment about the art design of Blade Runner, interviewing the people involved, etc. One thing that they said that was unusual about the film, and hard to replicate, is that there was some kind of a strike (perhaps writer's guild) around the time that they were pre-producing the film, so they had a much larger amount of time to design and plan the look of the movie than the usual, so they really went to town on
Syfylys passes on an actual classic (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why you put an executive in charge of a channel that actually likes the genre. Bonnie Hammer only saw SciFi Channel as a stepping stone to a more mainstream network (USA), and installed another idiot who didn't really care for the shows they were peddling when she left.
They should be funding movies based on classics, whenever possible, instead of the crappy creature-of-the-week and pseudo-reality crap they shovel out every week. These days, its possible to deliver quality science fiction programming without busting your budget, too - but somebody at the top has to be motivated to deliver this to the fans (the network's viewer base), rather than dump garbage none of the fan base wants to see in order to draw more "mainstream" viewers.
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This is why you put an executive in charge of a channel that actually likes the genre. Bonnie Hammer only saw SciFi Channel as a stepping stone to a more mainstream network (USA), and installed another idiot who didn't really care for the shows they were peddling when she left.
This. The fact that Syfy (hate that spelling) passed may actually be a good thing, but I can't really offer a thought on what it means that the BBC passed. Maybe it was a cost issue for them. Syfy's recent track record is not good unless Sharknado and it's ilk are all you are after.
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
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Exactly. I would do much the same as you.
I suspect there is a large number of science fiction fans that do not watch SyFy any more... they stream or watch the few shows they like from that network through on-demand and forego actually tuning into the network. I don't even know, off-hand, what the channel number is on my cable box.
They get good ratings for wrestling, but it has driven the fans away from the rest of the programming, which suffers because of it, and draws viewers that do not stick around for a
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...
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Maybe by successful they mean "relatable" or "comprehensible" or something.
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His most approachable, mainstream work.
'A Scanner Darkly' is his masterpiece.
Unless you follow his pseudo religious last 3 books.
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'A Scanner Darkly' is his masterpiece.
Maybe so. I really like some of his less-known stuff, like "Martian Time-Slip" and "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch."
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'Confessions of a Crap Artist' is also good. Though a partial retelling of that other one who's name escapes me. The guy who almost wiped out the earth then lived among the survivors.
'Counter Clock World' was interesting, in a 'Martian Time-Slip' kind of way..
I think the 5 volumes of his collected short stories was a good book purchase. Roog was a great short story about an insane dog.
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I think the 5 volumes of his collected short stories was a good book purchase.
After having read almost all of PKD's novels I started reading his short stories as collected in the 5-volume series. I really enjoyed the author's comments on a lot of these, some of which he's written decades after a story's publication.
Reading his novels -- first the well-known ones like Ubik, Androids, High Castle, etc., then going through all the rest of them, chronologically -- made PKD my "kind of" favorite SF author, along with Isaac Asimov, William Gibson and Kim Stanley Robinson. At first I was a
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Stanislaw Lem thought that P. K. Dick was the only S. F. writer whose work had any literary merit.
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I try not to let the opinions of literary types prejudice me against PKD.
Wrong way to end (Score:1)
Ugh, I always hated those stories in which the Axis powers invade America. They never had any plans to do so. Germany wanted a continental empire going East until the Ural mountains. Japan wanted a resource area for itself, and never really figured out where its final objective was (Australia? India? Hawaii?) before the disaster at Midway happened and all plans went on hold. Italy...Mare Nostrum. They just wanted to dominate the Mediterranean.
None of them had any plans involving the U.S. homeland. H
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[...]not the point at all. It's about something much deeper, the nature of reality as both objective and external, and as a collective, disjoint hallucination of multiple subjects.
Exactly, pretty much any novel or story of his deals with this exact subject to some large degree. If you're into that, PKD's writing is an absolute goldmine.
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Yet the alternative history in the new Wallenstein games is awesome.
Is this to be an empathy test? (Score:1, Funny)
from a fan (Score:1)
It's not fair (Score:4, Informative)
It really sucks that Philip K Dick died at 53, broke, after cranking out 44 novels and 120 short stories. Between Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck, and A Scanner Darkly, he deserved to have some financial reward while he was still alive.
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He was batshit for years before death...speed will do that to you.
Read his last three novels (if you can get through them). He would have been happier with a nice piece of carpet fuzz then a million dollars.
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Yeah, I was just reading about that on his Wikipedia page. Sci-Fi writers are not known for their mental stability but he seemed particularly out there.
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You speak as though insanity isn't a predictable outcome of decades of speed use and abuse. I also have limited sympathy for those who cook their livers with booze. No enabling.
I suspect he had gotten over his cravings for popularity when he started writing novels about pink lasers putting thoughts into his head?
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"You speak as though insanity isn't a predictable outcome of decades of speed use and abuse."
It isn't, and his speed abuse in no way caused his schizophrenia.
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From Wiki:
Dick wrote all of his books published before 1970 while on amphetamines. "A Scanner Darkly (1977) was the first complete novel I had written without speed", said Dick in the interview. He also experimented briefly with psychedelics, but wrote The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, which Rolling Stone dubs "the classic LSD novel of all time", before he had ever tried them. Despite his heavy amphetamine use, however, Dick later said that doctors had told him that the amphetamines never actually affected him, that his liver had processed them before they reached his brain.
He dedicated Scanner to all his friends and people close to him who suffered/died from drug addiction, even listing his own name among them.
What really pushed him into "craziness" was the episode he had in 1974, when he started having visions and revelations after receiving a dose of sodium pentothal at the dentist's. A good account of that can be read here: New York Times article [nytimes.com]
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How would you even attempt to show that a person who constantly used amphetamines for decades had naturally occurring schizophrenia vs. amphetamine psychosis?
He didn't have a family history (as far as anyone knows).
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Tweakers coming out of the woodwork. Defending their drug of choice.
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Having five wives will do that to you
Still waiting for Ubik (Score:3)
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Yeah right... (Score:2)
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Somehow I wonder about the actors (Score:1)
Imagine the 'glorious Bastards' showing up again ...