Ridley Scott & BBC Developing Philip K Dick Story

[Bob The Skutter]

From Bleeding Cool

Ridley Scott, is now behind a new attempt to translate Dick to the moving pictures with a 4-part BBC series derived from The Man In The High Castle. Dick’s novel is set in an alternative 1962 where the allied forces of Japan and Germany won the second world war but are now coming into political conflict across the battlefield of what we think of as the United States. The book cover I’ve used in this post is quite illustrative of a basic set-up.

No director, or directors, have been named, but we do know that Ridley’s Scott Free productions are teaming up with Freemantle, Headline Pictures and Electric Shepherd, the production development watchdog for the Dick estate. Howard Brenton is currently writing the screenplay. His resume as a playwright shows a determined political drive, so I think he’ll really be riding this one home hard.

It'll be interesting to see what comes of this. But given how long it seems to take to develop some shows at the BBC I'm not expecting this any time soon.

 

[emacs]

Ridley Scott delving into the science fiction genre, theatrically, would be a good thing.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

It will be interesting to see how Scott handles it. But The Man In the High Castle isn't about actual warfare - it's much slippery-er than that.

I just hope they use American actors so I don't have to listen to Brits butchering American accents again.

 

[Shatnertage]

I'd really like to see this. There are so many layers to the story, they'll have to make a lot of cuts.

They could use Brits as the Germans without setting off any accent-alarms.

In my reading of the novel, that cover image isn't really suggestive of the content, but what do I know? And I'm leery of "improving" on the original.

 

[Harvey]

Ridley Scott? Howard Brenton (author of some of the best early episodes of Spooks/MI-5)? PK Dick? I'm down.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

It will be interesting to see how Scott handles it. But The Man In the High Castle isn't about actual warfare - it's much slippery-er than that.

I just hope they use American actors so I don't have to listen to Brits butchering American accents again.

Maybe we can stop butchering American accents when you stop butchering ours? Guess it depends on who the actors are there are some who do good accents both ways.

 

[DarthPipes]

I'd like to read this too. I finally read The Man in the High Castle a year ago and really enjoyed it.

 

[clint g]

Will watch. I'll probably pick up the book tomorrow as well. I never knew about this but it sounds interesting. I love this kind of stuff.

 

[Roger Wilco]

I fucking love this book. It should make an awesome movie. In fact thinking about I'm surprised it's never been done before.

 

[Python Trek]

It will be interesting to see how Scott handles it. But The Man In the High Castle isn't about actual warfare - it's much slippery-er than that.

I just hope they use American actors so I don't have to listen to Brits butchering American accents again.

We have Kevin Costner, and they have Hugh Laurie, so.......

 

[Ubik]

I fucking love this book. It should make an awesome movie. In fact thinking about I'm surprised it's never been done before.

It's actually shocking how few Philip K. Dick novels have made it into films. They keep stealing premises from his short stories, but actual adaptations of his novels - I can count only three (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Scanner Darkly, and Radio Free Albemuth.) This is ironic considering how filmic a lot of his novels are, including Man in the High Castle.


They've almost made Ubik and Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, but I think neither have gone anywhere. Sigh.

If this ever gets made (and I'll try not to get too hopeful about that), it could be phenomenal.